This is 40 Reviews
Top CriticHowever irritating 'This Is 40' is at times, there's a warmth that wins you over, and an honesty about families.
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| Original Score: 3/5
Apparently Apatow's penchant for if-it's-not-broke filmmaking isn't changing anytime soon. And it's a shame, because while This is 40 has plenty of laughs, it lacks decency and heart.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
The performers are so likable that you stay with them even when, as is often the case, the material is hit-or-miss.
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| Original Score: B-
Judd Apatow is not a disciplined artist. And that's a good thing.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
"This Is 40" tends to be about the self-inflicted problems of spoiled upper-middle class white people. Which can be sort of funny, sure. Sort of.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
No one could be as whiny, spoiled, tasteless, combative and reliant on annoying stand-up comedy riffs as the entire cast of this film, the most disappointing one of the year.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Overlong, unnecessarily sex-obsessed and downright nasty at times, "This Is 40" feels haphazard and unfinished, despite a few moments of laugh-out-loud humor.
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| Original Score: 2/4
At times "This is 40" is brutally funny and brutally honest. Just as often, it's painfully shrill and unpleasant.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
The film has as much to say about family dynamics as a couple's wavering love.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
The real problem with "This Is 40" is its lack of truth, that Apatow wanted to express something about married life, and it eluded him.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
There are moments of perception and sweetness, as per usual with Apatow movies. It's just too bad the movie's trajectory is formless and jokes built around petty marital resentments sometimes fall flat.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
It's not so much a movie as a loose collection of mostly funny conversations; and maybe, for the holidays, laughter is almost gift enough.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
With This Is 40, Apatow turns his audience into fitfully chuckling therapists, dealing with a raft of problems that aren't entirely sorted out.
The bawdy wit and crisp dialogue that were the hallmark of Apatow's Knocked Up are still present, but the conflicts feel so cushy that one gets the impression that the filmmaker is losing touch with life as it is lived outside of Brentwood.
There's a funny movie scratching at the edges of "This is 40."
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
"This Is 40" is a bull's-eye zeitgeist comedy, a movie in which everyone acts like real people but funnier.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
This Is 40 is messy. But see it for its honest insights, its laughs, and for the terror Mann's character, as a mom defending her emotionally wounded daughter, rains down on a toothy school kid who's been sending unflattering texts.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
There are a lot of loose ends and a few forced conclusions. But, then again, the acceptance of imperfection is Mr. Apatow's theme, so a degree of sloppiness is to be expected. That's life.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
This is too much like a $35-million smart phone filled with kids' pictures.
I hate to say it, but if Judd Apatow wants to be a seriously funny filmmaker, he may have to leave home.
We aren't used to comedies that make us squirm like this. That doesn't mean they aren't worth our time. This Is 40 is.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
After copping out in "Funny People," Apatow still hasn't set the table for a meaty drama, but making us laugh is a piece of cake.
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| Original Score: 3/4
"This Is 40" turns out to be an opportunity squandered.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Apatow does a good job of charting the uncertain waters of marriage - the tears, the arguments, the moments of clandestine sex interrupted by children, and the love and affection that are often masked by more immediate frustrations.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
This is 40 is crude and dull, with a supporting cast that reminds you how utterly uninteresting the main characters are.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
As the movie goes on, the laughs are fewer and farther between, and for the last 30 minutes, not only did I not laugh, I wanted it to end so I could get back to my own boring but less precious life.
The movie frequently shifts from comic to dramatic and back again, true to Apatow's whiplash style but also true to life.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Mixing topicality and improv, Apatow rescued big-screen comedy from its lengthy wallow in the trough of dumb-and-dumber -- we have good reason to thank the guy. Until now.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
It's the feel-bad comedy of the holiday season - and that's what makes it good.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
'This Is 40' isn't without flaws, it moves along nicely, and while it doesn't boast ... it does manage to be very consistently funny in a way that makes dramatic sense.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Much like marriage, This Is 40 is somewhat formless, and it almost never hurries up. But life is improved by having the option.
Judd Apatow makes comedies that count. This Is 40 doesn't build to a catharsis. Yet Pete and Debbie's sparring yields some of Apatow's most personal observations yet.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Here is all the plenitude and warmth and the triviality and sadness of Los Angeles life.
This Is 40 isn't always hilarious, but it's ticklishly honest and droll about all the things being a parent can do to a relationship. And why it's still worth it.
Full Review
| Original Score: A-
As [Apatow's] title implies, he could have taken a deeper plunge into the main task of middle age: revision.
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| Original Score: 3/5
An acutely perceptive, emotionally generous laffer about the joys and frustrations of marriage and middle age.
Even with all its ups and downs, there are more than enough bawdy laughs and truthful emotional moments to put this over as a mainstream audience pleaser during a holiday season short on good comedies.
A pure, maximalist representation of a gifted artist simultaneously at the top of his game and looking to expand the form.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
