Happy Friday: It's Movie Night!!

Watched This is 40 tonight with my lil' woman while mowing down on some chips and cola.  Great Friday night if you ask me.  Here's what I think of the movie...

It did not meet our expectations, but I liked it none-the-less.  As a sort of sequel to Knocked Up, I think I was expecting the same sort of tone and instead it was much more toned down of a movie.  At certain points it seemed as if it was trying to be a drama of some sort.  It didn't have any real highs, no real lows, and it was a bit of a mish-mash of stories, ideas and characters.  In that sense it was very much like life.  It also did not have a real neat ending where all (or any of) the loose ends were tied up - which in my mind was a good thing.

It's tough to know what the film-makers intentions were.  Were these choices that Apatow made in order to reflect what family life is like.  It often is messy, chaotic and ambiguous.  It's full of rich, complex, dynamic relationships that are very much in progress.  Was this a case of Apatow marrying form to content?  Perhaps it was - in which case well done.

Or it might have been a case of a writer trying to fit too many things into one film without having a clear direction or through-line on which to structure his story and characters around.  It did lack a conventional story arc (not necessarily a bad thing) and I'm not sure the characters changed a whole lot from beginning to end...which again is perhaps a little like real life.

At times the film seemed a little too raw or real, and could have used some more comic relief.  There were definitely scenes where I was nodding my head thinking, yeah - that's fatherhood, and realized that I'm an old 33 years.

I enjoyed it.  Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann are fun to watch as always.  Jason Segel is great whether he is the lead in a movie or simply pitching-in as support as in This is 40.  And Megan Fox...well what you can say about her?  She did her thing and did it well.

Overall I found this one entertaining even if it was not raucously brilliant.  I enjoyed it and it made me think about myself as a husband and father and how well I'm doing in that regard.

Is this an instant comedy classic?  I don't think so but I would give it 3.5 out of 5 stars as a good, solid renter.