Bad Movies Done Right – The 41-Year-Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It

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Every day Robert Saucedo shines a spotlight on a movie either so bad it’s good or just downright terrible. Today: A movie the filmmakers hope will make you laugh until you’ve spoofed all over your pants!

I’m not sure when “spoof” became a dirty word but, after watching The 41-Year-Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It (henceforth referred to as 41-Year-Old Virgin), I feel as desensitized as if I had just spent the afternoon with a ex-con/pirate with Tourette’s.

The film is, as you may have guessed from its obnoxiously long title, a spoof of the films directed and produced by Judd Apatow. Director Craig Moss, a filmmaker whose only previous claim to fame had been directing a short film titled Saving Ryan’s Privates, co-wrote 41-Year-Old Virgin with writing partner Brad Kaaya. Together, the two of them made a concentrated effort to jam-pack as many pop culture references and unfunny sight gags into an hour and a half as they possibly could.

Making a funny parody is hard enough work. Making a movie that attempts to cleverly send-up films that are already highly regarded for their comedic wit just seems suicidal.

There are moments in 41-Year-Old Virgin where scenes from Superbad or Knocked Up, are taken, stripped of any form of wit or intelligence, and repackaged as dumbed down scenes seemingly leftover on the cutting room floor from the worst seasons of MadTV.

At first, it might appear the filmmakers were actually geniuses, cleverly mocking the often juvenile nature of Apatow’s films, but, as the film clearly begins to play off its depressingly awful material for laughs with instead of laughs at, it becomes obvious that the film’s writers were just huge fans of Apatow’s work that were determined to create an homage to his material but clearly lacking the talent to do so.

While it’s true that Moss and Kaaya have made a movie deserving just as much derision and bile as the cinematic turds pooped out by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, what’s even worse of a crime is the fact that, nestled like sprinkles on a moldy cupcake, there are a few bits of genuinely funny material in 41-Year-Old Virgin — unfortunately these moments are mostly hidden behind the same old tired pop culture gags that doom nearly every modern spoof movie that’s been released in the last 15 years.

In the film, MadTV star Bryan Callen stars as Andy, the titular 41-year-old virgin. Andy lives in a house filled to the brim with practically every single Judd Apatow character archetype. But when I say archetype, I don’t really mean that. In reality, instead of presenting new and original characters that fit the Apatow mold and crafting craft jokes around them, the filmmakers behind 41-Year-Old Virgin have literally cherry-picked characters from Apatow’s films, hired look-alike actors (or ones who can do a pretty decent vocal impression) and ratcheted up the absurd to astronomical proportions — for example, there’s Stephen Kramer Glickman as Seth, an obese hairy slacker who does a pretty good Seth Rogan impression and walks around cracking “You know how I know you’re gay” jokes before randomly breaking into a Daniel Plainview impression.

There is somewhat of a plot involving Andy’s quest to loose his virginity with the help of his miscreant friends — including a randomly thrown in character named Blaqguy that serves as a combination of a Benjamin Button spoof and a Romany Malco stand-in (though, the filmmakers dress him as Samuel L. Jackson).

There is really no point in summarizing the movie, though, as the plot is a threadbare excuse to link as many of the gags as possible into some semblance of a story. Besides the Apatow spoofs, there are gags parodying Twilight, Slumdog Millionaire, Grand Theft Auto and the popular Dos Equis commercials featuring The Most Interesting Man in the World.

At least the film’s cinematographer knew how to movie a camera — with several scenes in the film aping not only the jokes but also the styles and camera movements of the film it is parodying.

41-Year-Old Virgin is exactly the type of uninspired parody crap that has been dumped into audiences laps (and eaten up by the great unwashed masses) for the last few years ad nauseam. Craig Moss is just the latest perpetrator of bad filmmaking — the biggest difference between him and the rest of the cinematic terrorists being, he should no better.

As I skimmed through the DVD’s special features, time and time again Moss and his co-writer specifically named the reasons why modern parody movies are so awful — and then they went and made one anyway. The actors, during their interviews, blatantly make the claim that they were attempting to out-funny the funny movies they are parodying.

By the way, Craig Moss and the “comedy” team of Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg will get the chance to have a battle of the unfunny spoofs this fall when they release competing Twilight spoofs. Hold still my beating heart.

There is nothing wrong with making fun of good films — parodies and spoofs have long served a purpose of keeping egos and checks and taking the air out of overinflated tires. That said, it takes some real balls to razz on talented people when you, yourself, have no talent.

Wait a minute… Was that irony sinking in?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNPQIlUioVQ

Robert Saucedo would feel bad for ragging on 41-Year-Old Virgin so much … if the filmmakers agree to feel bad for me having wasted an hour and a half watching it. Follow Robert on Twitter @robsaucedo2500.

Robert Saucedo is an avid movie watcher with seriously poor sleeping habits. The Mikey from Life cereal of film fans, Robert will watch just about anything — good, bad or ugly. He has written about film for newspapers, radio and online for the last 10 years. This has taken a toll on his sanity — of that you can be sure. Follow him on Twitter at @robsaucedo2500.