This is 40

THIS IS 40 (Judd Apatow, 2012)

A milestone birthday is causing tension for married couple Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann) in THIS IS 40.  With their pivotal birthdays occurring in the same week, it’s natural that they use the occasion of turning 40 to assess their lives and decide what needs work.  They try to be calm and sensible, making standard promises to eat more healthfully and take more time for each other, but Pete and Debbie can’t shake the existential panic creeping up on them.  

It doesn’t help that their businesses are in crisis to varying degrees.  Pete’s record label is bleeding money trying to sell new albums from music industry legends whose audiences have dwindled since their glory days.  Debbie’s boutique is managing to do OK but can’t afford to be short the thousands of dollars that an employee may be stealing.  

Debbie responds to it all by refusing to admit to her age, preferring to claim to be turning 38 or younger.  She sneaks cigarettes and withholds information that she doesn’t think Pete wants to hear.  Pete doesn’t seem as hung up on how many birthdays he’s had. Rather, he secretly rebels against the idea that a number means he should cut down or eliminate cupcakes and French fries from his diet.  He also doesn’t tell Debbie that they might need to sell their house and lies to her about the loans he continues to give his dad Larry (Albert Brooks).

At some time or another every adult has surely taken pause at the thought of having turned into one’s parents at least a little, but Pete and Debbie worry independently about the prospect of the other becoming like their father.  The concern is especially acute for Debbie.  She sees Pete’s dad unable to support himself and having a much younger wife and kids.  Never mind that her own father Oliver (John Lithgow) abandoned her as a child, goes years without seeing her, and also has a second wife and kids about the same ages as hers.  Pete frets that Debbie could develop the same kind of emotional distance with him that she has with Oliver, particularly as they go through a rough patch in THIS IS 40.  

The protagonists’ joint fear is stagnation, not mortality.  Have they become so at ease around each other that all mystery is gone?  With his legs spread eagle in the air, Pete asks Debbie to check out and confirm what he hopes is a hemorrhoid.  She thinks nothing of barging in on him while he’s on the toilet.  He uses the bathroom for alone time to play iPad games and escape from her and their daughters Sadie (Maude Apatow) and Charlotte (Iris Apatow).  They don’t hate one another, at least not most of the time, but the strains of running businesses, raising a family, and turning an age deemed culturally significant have piled up.   

Thankfully the Pete and Debbie in THIS IS 40 are dialed down from the bickering couple that first appeared in KNOCKED UP.  They engage in their fair share of arguments, but this time around the relationship isn’t as acrimonious and Debbie, while still quick to anger, isn’t as shrill.  Whether they’re having a conversation or talking to others, all the chatter functions like therapy sessions.  (One funny moment has the pair attempting to use counselor-approved language while they fight.)  

THIS IS 40 works better as light drama than comedy, with humor defusing the bombs being lobbed in the marriage.  The jokes rely on common observations than insight, but writer-director Judd Apatow corrals many of the niggling worries into a squirming mass of anxieties capable of being laughed at.  Despite the title, by no means is the film a definitive or universal statement on reaching middle age.  

For better or worse Apatow likes to take a lot of detours in his films.  This time the aimless course he follows makes more sense even though it could stand a more guided approach.  Still, the path leads to every nook and cranny in individual and shared lives to illuminate the totality of what the duo is dealing with.  There’s also no single destination where Pete and Debbie must arrive as long as they’re on the journey together.  

Grade: B-

Drillbit Taylor

DRILLBIT TAYLOR (Steven Brill, 2008)

Gangly Wade (Nate Hartley) and chubby Ryan (Troy Gentile) are stoked for the first day of high school. They can carve out new, cool identities for themselves, that is until they show up wearing the same shirt and stand up for tiny, bullied Emmit (David Dorfman). These fashion and social blunders put them on the radar of Filkins (Alex Frost), the school's most fearsome bully. Filkins is emancipated from his Hong Kong-dwelling parents and snookers Principal Doppler (Stephen Root) with his Eddie Haskell act, meaning he is answerable to no one.

In DRILLBIT TAYLOR the boys determine that their only means for survival is to hire a bodyguard. They interview many but can only afford the curiously named Drillbit Taylor (Owen Wilson). Claiming to have been discharged from the Army for going beyond the permissible limits of heroism, Drillbit talks up his fighting and covert ops expertise to earn their trust. Whether he is telling the truth is beside the point. The homeless beggar is only interested in scrounging up a few hundred dollars to get him to the better life he believes is waiting in Canada.

Drillbit intends for the bodyguard arrangement to provide a quick monetary gain but discovers that he can string along the boys for much more. He holds impromptu self-defense lessons that he makes up as he goes along. To keep their suspicions down, Drillbit infiltrates their school using a substitute teacher's guise, which has the side benefit of attracting a pretty English teacher (Leslie Mann).

Produced by Judd Apatow and co-written by Seth Rogen, DRILLBIT TAYLOR has a been there, done that quality reminiscent of SUPERBAD if it were much tamer and less funnier. The character names may be different, but these types are mirror images of Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. It's very easy to envision those actors' younger selves as Wade, Ryan, and Emmit. Although not a prequel in any way, DRILLBIT TAYLOR is essentially the unofficial bookend SUPERBAD: FRESHMAN YEAR and a sign of diminishing returns from the Apatow brand.

Ultimately DRILLBIT TAYLOR lacks enough fresh material with the boys to sustain interest for the stretches when their bodyguard is bumming around off-screen. Nothing distinguishes their ordeals from the zillion other teen comedies in decades past. Perhaps that shouldn't be surprising since John Hughes gets a story credit under the pseudonym Edmond Dantes.

Yet for as overly familiar much of DRILLBIT TAYLOR is, Wilson salvages a good deal of it with his trademarked space case shtick. The lines he delivers aren't inherently funny; it's how sunnily and seriously he speaks them in his lilting voice that makes the words humorous. The Zen cowboy/mystic surfer routine is fitting for a script that doesn't tether the character to the world or this particular cinematic one. Drillbit floats in and away when the spirit moves him, leaving the bulk of a film named after him to the three boys he's supposed to be protecting.

Where Wilson struggles, though, is in defining a character that the writers don't see clearly. Is Drillbit looking to exploit the kids, or does he truly like them and take their safety to heart? Is there something darker spinning in his head, or is he an amiable bum with a severe lack of motivation? DRILLBIT TAYLOR suggests all of these as it flip-flops to an ending that opts for the softest landing. The film could have cut loose more if the writers decided Drillbit doesn't care at all or is a mother hen. It's safer in the school hallways to stay neutral, but in comedy a side needs to be picked.

Grade: C

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY (Jake Kasdan, 2007)

From humble southern roots Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly) rises to the top of the music charts, hits bottom, and, of course, finds redemption in the end. WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY tells this familiar show business tale, but unlike other year-end, award-trawling dramatizations of celebrity success and suffering, this one is a goof on rags-to-riches biographical films.

Dewey sets hearts aflutter and ministers a-fulminatin' from practically the first chords his teenage rock and roll band strums at a talent show. Convinced to make a life of his own in music, Dewey and his soon-to-be wife Edith (Kristen Wiig) leave with stars in their eyes and Pa Cox's (Raymond J. Barry) harsh words nipping at their heels.

Sure enough, Dewey presses a hit record in no time flat, but accompanying his meteoric success are the usual pitfalls: orgies, drugs, and, when he and Edith separate, a fight for custody of the chimp. The primary other woman is Darlene Madison (Jenna Fischer), a virtuous backup singer who gets Dewey hotter than a pepper sprout. Through the decades she drifts in and out of his life as easily as Dewey changes styles, including a Dylanesque firebrand phase and endless studio tinkerer like Brian Wilson.

WALK HARD writer-director Jake Kasdan and co-writer Judd Apatow borrow the framework and story from WALK THE LINE. Bits of RAY and conventions from other biopic are included for good measure. Mostly, though, it's a scene for scene answer to the Johnny Cash film down to the way shots are framed and lit.

Direct, feature-length parodying of a single film runs the risk of punchlines being anticipated before the set-ups are made. Once WALK HARD'S corresponding WALK THE LINE scenes are recognized, many jokes can be predicted with ease. Sometimes it is funnier to foresee what's coming, but when the level fails to rise above the kinds of wisecracks a rowdy audience might sling at the screen, the humor needs to be freshened. (This goes double for the extensive wordplay riffing on Dewey's surname.)

The film is more assured when it makes mincemeat of tried and true biopic clichés. WALK HARD makes a mockery of actors unconvincingly playing a wide range of character ages, the overnight fame ascension montage (done here in an afternoon), and heavy-handed views of the past through the eyes of the present, often the most cringeworthy moments in period films. (Think of the confident professions of skepticism about something then unproven or unaccepted but now well-known or commonplace).

Reilly is game for anything Kasdan and Apatow throw at him. He deserves points for keeping a straight face in a two-shot close-up the likes of which won't be found in any other Hollywood films. Reilly also proves himself versatile as a singer, equally at ease with a ballad suited for Roy Orbison, upbeat rockabilly in the vein of Cash and Elvis, and a cryptic, singsongy Dylan tune.

What he lacks is a steady comedic partner. In WALK THE LINE June Carter and the romance were front and center with The Man in Black, but WALK HARD, focused more on stringing sketches than building narrative, underutilizes its potential lead actress. Fischer is called upon to do no more than look foxy as Darlene. Even her funniest scene, the subtlety-free, double entendre-dripping "Let's Duet", finds the actress lip-syncing.

Without question the film's highlights are the credible imitations of pop music spanning at least three decades. For all of the care and creativity put into WALK HARD'S original songs, the rest of the film feels less inspired and maybe a little lazy.

Grade: C