Post: #1

Yes, I saw the damn thing.

http://m.imdb.com/title/tt1758830/

All 3 hours of it. What can I say? It was freezing outside and I'll see pretty much anything in theatres.

Right off the bat it's obvious Judd Apatow has a serious cuckold fetish. His real world wife is the female lead, his children are the children. You immediately get the feeling he just wanted to make a film about his life and watch Paul Rudd bang his wife. It's an incredible exercise in hubris.

Obviously, this is meant to be a blue pill story of how, despite all the bullshit baggage marriage and kids comes with, it's totally worth it. Or worth it if you're in the 1-2% of top earners in the country. This movie could have just as easily been titled "First World Problems" and it would have been the exact same film. It's really laughable to watch these characters deal with the absolutely trivial, petty utterly minute problems that billions the world would give their right kidney to have. Apatow's hubris is truly legendary in this film.

But, towards the end of the second hour (good God it's long), I started to think maybe Apatow outdid himself. I mean, he made marriage look so patently awful for Paul Rudd's character you can't help but to wonder. Rudd gets bitched at by his annoying wife, his kids go without discipline and make his life hell, and he has to deal with a bunch of SWPL shit that makes him miserable. Sure, the ending is suitably Hollywood mushy and teaches the true value of marriage (heh), but I think Apatow shot himself in the foot with all the fighting and awful sex and fantasizing about younger, hotter women.

Hard to tell, but it looked like at least some of the male audience was in agreement. People (men predominately) were audibly groaning as this clunker dragged on and Rudd's character had to put up with more outright bullshit from his wife.

And there is so much hamsterism on the behalf of Leslie Mann it's almost at a parody level. A married woman going out with her 20 year old employee to get drunk and grind on strangers and have obvious mental masturbatory sessions with a bunch of hockey players she meets at the club? It might as well be a poster for the divorce culture of Western women.

Overall, this supposed introspection on marriage reinforced my notion the institution is completely dead in America. No amount of feel-good 11th hour emotional exploration can make up for the fact that Apatow showed marriage for what it is for most men - a horrible trap. And these people are rich, white, and privileged. Their kids go to private school, they drive new luxury German and Japanese cars, they have a mansion with hired help, they have all the iDevices you could ever want... and Paul Rudd spends the majority of the movie stressed out and tired of dealing with his wife's crap.

Two thumbs up for unintentionally exposing how miserable marriage is for everybody in this country, Mr. Apatow!

Post: #2

The only difference between "This Is 40" wife and most American wives is that Leslie Mann is slender. Most married men have to take all the nonsense in that movie but with an additional 50 lbs.

Post: #3

Notice that the closest Paul Rudd's character comes to cheating on his wife is oggling at a just-about-to-hit-the-wall Megan Fox.

But I think it's a mistake to see this as a red pill movie. In Crazy, Stupid, Love, Steve Carrel's wife cheats on him with Kevin Bacon and asks for a divorce. Only then does he sleep with just the second woman in his life, played by Marissa Tomei. Yet until the very end, it's Carrel's character trying to win back his wife, rather than the other way around, and it's not the least bit clear he'll succeed.

This is 40 is better, but in the same vein. Leslie Mann is a controlling wife who won't even let her husband eat cupcakes, flirts with cheating, and conceals her pregnancy, and in the end Paul Rudd is stuck with a 40 year old wife who's stuck him with another child against his will.

Post: #4

at least hollywood is moving away from whitewashing how happy married couples are with films like this and crazy stupid love. while the husband is emasculated in both those films is the portrayal of the slutty, bitchy wife and spoiled children isnt much better

Post: #5

I have not seen This is 40 yet, BUT, being one of the seven people who saw The Five-year Engagement, and reading your thoughts, and having seen most of his other work, I'm starting to think that the guy is less of a seriously delusional beta, and more of a shrewd, cunning red-pill wizard (or some shit) who knows just how to wrap up his message in movies to ensure maximum profit.

If you ever have an afternoon to kill (because like most of his work lately, at 124 minutes, The 5-year Engagement clocks in at over two hours and could have easily shaved off 20 minutes), check it out. It features;

- A beta (Jason Segel) engaged to a hard-charging grad student (Emily Blunt).
- Him being supportive of the fact that her dreams and her career, and that what she wants (a graduate program) is more important than what he wants (a job as a head chef), he's even willing to leave the SWPL paradise of San Francisco to relocate to Ann Arbor with her.
- The female lead's hot sister (Alison Brie) getting knocked up after a one-night stand with the male lead's best friend, an aloof, charming asshole (Chris Pratt) and their eventual shotgun marriage filled with the 'joys' of child-rearing.
- A breakup, after which Segel dates a younger, hotter server at his restaurant, and Blunt dates her older professor.
- A classically trite and happy 'Hollywood ending' where love conquers all and the pair are reunited.

Post: #6

Apatow is a realist. He seems to be up to something. In his films, women are bitchy cheaters, PUA are the only happy, successful people, men are emasculated. The only character you might want to be in his films is Gosling's character in that Crazy Love movie. Women behave so badly. They are not condemned morally in the narrative; they are given a free pass. But god they are beastly and unhappy.