The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) [Unrated] – 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital Code

The 40 Year Old Virgin
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring Steve Carell, Catherine Keener, Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen
written by Judd Apatow & Steve Carell
directed by Judd Apatow

by Bill Chambers Revisiting Judd Apatow’s The 40 Year Old Virgin for the first time in over 20 years is an experience in cognitive dissonance, as it features actors who haven’t really lost any of their currency in a world that has lost all of its currency. In 4K Ultra HiDef super-duper resolution, that world is maddeningly tactile, but it slips through your fingers, like it did in reality. The 40 Year Old Virgin was about one wide-eyed innocent; today, it’s about several. People who don’t know that plagues are coming in the form of smartphones, MAGA, COVID, and AI. Who’ve never used Tinder. Who can’t tell the difference between Aquaman and Iron Man. The ignorance must be bliss. This is not to gloss over the poorly aged edgelord humour–which is very likely inextricable from that ignorance–or frame Bush II’s second term as a utopia. (For starters, the theatrical release of The 40 Year Old Virgin coincided with Hurricane Katrina.) Still, the year before Twitter launched wouldn’t be a bad choice for a Restore Point. Watching The 40 Year Old Virgin in 2026, I envied everybody’s lightness of being. The fear and loathing that settles on us like dust now is absent here.

Truthfully, the world has been so broken for so long that most movies from the Before Times play like science-fiction to me at this point–fantasies of societies that are physically and mentally uninhibited. But I was hoping The 40 Year Old Virgin would still make me laugh. I need a laugh. Instead, I found myself pitying these poor bastards and wondering what their lives would be like today. Did Andy (Steve Carell) stay married to Trish (Catherine Keener), having lost his virginity to her on their wedding night? (That’s the bizarrely puritanical Apatow touch: Couldn’t have him lose it to premarital sex–too scandalous!^[i]) Trish, you’ll recall, had a college boyfriend who rode a motorcycle, a recent ex who drank, tween, teen, and adult daughters, rubbers in her bedside table; at what point does Andy’s niceness stop seeming like an acceptable trade-off for his naïveté, sexual and otherwise? Overnight, he goes from living alone as a virgin to being a married stepfather of three. That’s like being elected president when you only know how to molest children and bankrupt casinos. Is Andy foolish enough to open his stereo store in an economy that’s increasingly hostile to small business? Does it outlast the lockdowns? Does he?

Happy Gilmore 2 is partly to blame for my viewing The 40 Year Old Virgin this way, having demonstrated that the belated sequel to a dopey ’90s comedy can grapple with modern despair. It effectively critiques the glibness of the original, and the impact is transformative: Happy Gilmore becomes a portrait of callow youth in the vein of Antoine Doinel as opposed to another fratty comedy designed to showcase Sandler’s mercurial persona. While The 40 Year Old Virgin may gain extratextual interest from its time-capsule quality, the half-life of Apatow’s groundbreaking TV work has decayed enough that it’s no longer inflating the movie’s worth. A sequel by the same filmmakers that interrogates their younger selves could prove poignant. They might, for example, realize they were dealing with something much rarer than a 40-year-old virgin: a man who befriends other men in middle-age. Trish doesn’t bring Andy out of his shell, his co-workers do. He and his colleagues go from strangers to BFFs literally overnight once the secret behind Andy’s peculiarity comes out. Their efforts to get him laid are touching, however crass, because there’s nothing in it for them except seeing a friend of theirs happy.

In The 40 Year Old Virgin‘s second-most famous scene, Cal (Seth Rogen) and David (Paul Rudd) play “Mortal Kombat” together at Andy’s condo while their host calls Trish to ask her out on a date. Maybe it’s the autism goggles we all wear now, but what stood out to me this latest viewing is how monumental it must be for the monkish Andy to suddenly have guests, filling the room with their personalities and touching his stuff, so much of which is still in the packaging (a crude and belaboured metaphor for Andy’s virginity). Not that anything in the direction gave me this insight, with most of Apatow’s energies devoted to Cal and David’s impromptu game of “You Know How I Know You’re Gay?”–sort of a white man’s The Dozens that came to typify Apatow’s improvisational indulgences. It’s clearer in retrospect how mercenary the movie’s laughs are, and this kamikaze approach was undoubtedly the right one for building word-of-mouth and leaving a cultural footprint. But should Michael McDonald jokes or Jane Lynch singing a Guatemalan love song be what lingers from this film?

In The 40 Year Old Virgin, we see what would happen if a dirty teen movie from the ’80s decided not to age down its typically mature cast members–which isn’t bad film criticism, per se, but honouring some of the more retrograde tropes of the genre, from loose women to the tunnel-visioned view of sex as the endgame, blinds Apatow to the story he could and arguably should be telling about a recluse becoming a person in the world, not just hastily boxing himself into the status quo. That was always the problem with The 40 Year Old Virgin, I think, it’s just that 2026 brings into starker relief that they’ve got a dynamite protagonist they’re fundamentally incurious about. I suspect the filmmakers patted themselves on the back for managing to sell mainstream audiences on the introverted Andy, but they achieve this mainly by betraying the character’s intelligence for cheap laughs (see: the part where he’s suddenly Cosmo Kramer, wasting a dozen condoms on self-amused jackassery) and by refusing to probe the psychosexual baggage of a lifelong celibate. Andy is ultimately Play-Doh, kneaded to conform to the comic dimensions of a scene. There’s some pathos in that kind of chameleonic persona–some sociopathy, too. (Like how Andy effortlessly flips his good/evil switch after Cal (Seth Rogen) advises him to be a dick, i.e., “David Caruso in Jade,”^[ii] while hitting on the woman from the bookstore (Elizabeth Banks).) Yet I doubt very much it’s deliberate.

The picture suggests the reason for Andy’s sexual reticence is that he once accidentally kicked a woman (Carla Gallo) in the face while she was indulging in a kink. In the extended version, this joins another flashback in which he struggles to unhook the bra of a gorgeous, busty ex (Laura Bottrell), who mocks him for prematurely ejaculating. Humiliating? Yes. Embarrassing? That, too. The stuff of load-bearing trauma? Hardly–the American Pie guys go through worse on a slow Saturday.^[iii] Again, they’re selling Andy out for a joke. Frankly, to brush aside the more obvious wellsprings of his phobias (sex, porn, masturbation, driving), such as repressed homosexuality or religious guilt or an anxiety disorder, is as offensive as Knocked Up reducing abortion to an absurd idea worthy of an equally nonsense word: “shmabortion.” Even if Andy is, to paraphrase Carell, just a guy who fell behind and became a hermit, that creates its own anxieties worth exploring more thoughtfully. Am I saying The 40 Year Old Virgin should’ve been a deadly serious film about a late-bloomer overcoming his insidious programming? No, I’m saying if anyone could’ve mined laughs from that without sacrificing Andy’s dignity^[iv], it’s the (co-)creator of “Freaks and Geeks”. Oh well, 2005 was all an impossible dream anyway.

THE 4K UHD DISC
Universal brings The 40 Year Old Virgin to 4K UHD disc, presenting the 117-minute Theatrical and 133-minute Unrated versions of the film on the same side of a BD-100. The new and Apatow-approved 1.85:1, 2160p transfer overhauls the fugly 2008 Blu-ray so completely it would be pointless to compare the two, although this bundled release makes such a thing possible. Interestingly, there is a significant discrepancy between the Dolby Vision and HDR10 grades of this 4K version as well. The former is comparatively restrained in terms of saturation and contrast but looks, down to the beautifully resolved grain structure, uncannily filmic, echoing my memories of the projected image in 2005. I have little doubt the Dolby Vision trim hews closer to the intent of cinematographer Jack N. Green, who favoured a certain darkness in his many collaborations with Clint Eastwood. In HDR10, the highlights are cranked up, and the wider colour gamut takes on a garishness, resulting in a candy-coated flatness that has the effect of infantilizing Andy’s world, rightly or wrongly. It fatigued my eyes, in any event. You should of course take this assessment with a grain of salt, as everyone’s display is calibrated differently.

Though the attendant Dolby Atmos remix is less than revelatory, the soundstage does thunder to life during a couple of musical interludes (“Theme from The Greatest American Hero (Believe It or Not)” and the closing medley of “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” from Hair). Voices are ferociously clear, and the background ambiance at Smart Tech is persuasive. (Sadly, the Blu-ray is the only way to hear the picture’s original 5.1 soundmix.) Additionally accompanying either cut of the film is a feature-length yakker from co-writer/director Judd Apatow, co-writer/star Steve Carell, actor/co-producer Seth Rogen, and actors Gerry Bednob, Shelley Malil, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Jane Lynch, and Romany Malco. Recording the track two weeks prior to the movie’s theatrical bow, the participants were confident it would do well but unshackled by any preconceived notions about what fans would want to hear. The conversation is surprisingly languid for a group yakker, without a lot of jockeying for the mic. Topics include the Second City origins of the project, screenwriting/directing hacks (not a double-entendre), and Bednob’s illustrious career. (He was in Encino Man and Monkey Trouble.) Trainspotting extemporaneous dialogue becomes a pastime, and there is debate over whether the restored Stormy Daniels scene goes too far, as producer Shauna Robertson allegedly believed.

The only other extra on the 4K platter is also exclusive to it: a 49-minute “20th Anniversary Discussion” taped at the Academy Museum that reunites Apatow, Carell, and actors Bednob, Kat Dennings, Catherine Keener, and Lynch. (Apatow serves as de facto moderator.) There’s not a ton of overlap with the commentary thanks to the roster change, but neither is there a ton of meat on this bone. Carell is curiously tight-lipped throughout, perhaps convinced he has the most to lose with an ill-considered remark. (Bednob’s repeated use of “pussy juice cocktail” causes him palpable discomfort.) With a few minutes to go, Apatow opens the floor for questions, sending a jolt of electricity through the stage–especially when an audience member confesses to still being a virgin at the age of 32.

The remaining video-based supplements are housed on the Blu-ray in standard-def, sometimes windowboxed to 1.85:1 within a 1.33:1 frame. There’s a punishing amount of them, so let’s do this bullet-point style.

• Start with a whopping 16 deleted scenes totalling 27 minutes, with optional commentary on the first six from Apatow and Rogen, Apatow’s prize calf. Some of these are more fruitful than anything added to the extended cut, including another moment with the guys swapping sex stories that ends on the decidedly loaded note of Malco’s Jay confessing he lost his virginity to a babysitter at nine years old and resenting their reaction. Another scene explains a lot–nay, everything–about Andy’s neuroses, as it depicts his scary mom (Phyllis from “The Office”) warning him in a childhood flashback-cum-dream sequence never to pleasure himself–and offering to buy him an action figure every time he resists the urge. This is, unfortunately, one of the commentary-free elisions; I suspect it was snipped because it would put one too many elephants in the room with Andy and women. I should also single out an extended encounter between Andy and the prostitute (Jazzmun) that might’ve mitigated some of the scene’s transphobia as it currently stands by giving Jazzmun a modicum of agency. Here, Andy actually consents to sex, but the prostitute, feeling no attraction to Andy (and sensing he doesn’t bend that way), rebuffs him; the two end up watching Ang Lee’s Hulk together over pizza.
• Four more outtakes (5 mins. in toto) are grouped under the heading “The First Time” because they’re from Andy’s wild night out with the boys, which was severely truncated in the finished film. (The title stems from Andy’s choice of karaoke song: “The First Time,” from Zorba the Greek.) Love to see them bonding in principle, but once they start pissing against the wall for an eternity, their drunken routine grows as tedious as it would be for the sober spectator in real life. Commentary from Apatow and Rogen is limited to Andy’s singing debut; they like it! The next section, “Tales from the Stock Room,” contains four more deleted scenes running another five minutes altogether, each of which sees Cal testing Andy’s patience with inane observations and detailed descriptions of his masturbation habits. Hoo, can Rogen talk! He even jabbers over three of these sketch-like scenes–they could slot in comfortably as SNL interstitials–with Apatow.
• “Date-A-Palooza” (9 mins.) is a bloated cut of the turbo-dating montage, highlighting the improv skills of not just the central cast, but day players like Mo Collins, Suzy Nakamura, and the ubiquitous Gillian Vigman. Leslie Mann’s Nicky returns to retraumatize Andy, but the payoff is underwhelming.
• Submitted for your approval, the Rogen/Rudd-fronted “You Know How I Know You’re Gay?” centrepiece, ballooned to an extravagant six minutes. It’s not all extra gay jokes, though–first, David shares his restaurant dreams. Apatow and Rogen offer analytic commentary.
• “Line-O-Rama” (6 mins.) of course sparked a tradition of compiling ad-libs that didn’t make the grade for the bonus features of Apatow DVDs and Blu-rays hereafter. If “Date-A-Palooza” had too many R-words, this inaugural “Line-O-Rama” leans too heavily on gay slurs. A four-minute “Gag Reel,” by the way, is almost exactly the same thing, only the actors crack up more often.
• “Judd’s Video Diaries” (21 mins.) finds Apatow privately discussing his progress as a first-time director on various days of the three-month shoot. His relentless wisecracking quickly grows tiresome (you fucked the dogs on the film, you say?)–who’s he trying to impress in these moments alone in his trailer?–and indeed obfuscates the truth whenever he tells it. (Until watching the abovementioned reunion, I thought Apatow was kidding about the studio shutting down production to give Carell a haircut. (They felt he looked like a serial killer.)) That said, seeing the weird science of Hollywood production scheduling in action is nerdily fascinating.
• “Waxing Doc” (4 mins.) documents the day of the waxing. Carell is confident it won’t hurt (I can’t tell to what extent his bravado is authentic). Four cameras were used simultaneously, presumably to capture spontaneous reactions and provide a safety net for coverage, since second takes would be in short supply.
• In “My Dinner with Stormy” (2 mins.), Rogen introduces himself to Daniels over wine. She then reveals a Seth Rogen tattoo on her bare breast and goes in for a blowjob. As squirmy as it is, it’s obviously gained currency in recent years. I wonder if this is how she landed on Trump’s radar.
• A selection of “Raw footage” (19 mins.) from the Poker Game, Waxing, and Bathing Beth sequences proves grotesquely self-admiring. Beware the artist expecting you to admire the eraser dust. Could one learn to direct from watching these? My Magic 8 Ball says, “Outlook not so good.” Could one die of boredom watching this shit? 8 Ball says, “You may rely on it.”
• “Poker Game Rehearsal” (5 mins.) is a cold read-through of the poker game following a “massive rewrite.” Huddled together in a tiny office, Carell, Rudd, Malco, and Rogen are already in perfect sync, and while I realize this may be a minority opinion, their characters’ conversation flows better without the in-between riffing that got added to it.
• “Auditions” for Jonah Hill, Elizabeth Banks, Malco, Malil, Lynch, Bednob, and Jazzmun run eight minutes collectively. Huge and polite, Hill is hardly the person we know today, and he auditions for a different role than the one he eventually played. Banks, Malco, and Lynch read with Carell, Jazzmun with Rogen; most of the dialogue we hear evidently comes from discarded drafts of the script.
• “Reel Comedy Roundtable” is a 21-minute Comedy Central special in which Apatow presides over a literal roundtable dialogue with Carell, Rudd, Malco, and Rogen. Dense with clips from The 40 Year Old Virgin, it presumes zero familiarity with either the film or the self-mythologizing anecdotes told dozens of times elsewhere in these special features, making it fairly worthless to the seasoned viewer. On the other hand, I grow wistful remembering that a promotional pit stop on basic cable was once a critical component of movie marketing.
• “Cinemax FinalCut: The 40-Year-Old Virgin” (12 mins.) is a trendily overedited group interview with Carell, Rudd, Rogen, and Apatow. Carell says they thought it’d be funnier if they played it real, but did they? I ask because I seem to recall Andy crashing his bicycle into the freight container of a truck and coming out the other side unscathed. “He’s a normal person. He’s not damaged emotionally.” Agree to disagree. Rudd ends up telling a pathetic story about sitting outside a Benetton store for four hours with a rose, waiting for a girl he liked to finish work. For good or ill, absent is the tongue that would be firmly in cheek if he told it today.

Joining the theatrical trailer (2m33s) in rounding out the platter is a “1970s Sex Ed Film”–or at least a five-minute excerpt from one–in which one Dr. Harvey Caplan talks with teens about navigating the treacherous road to sex for the first time. This is interspersed with campy dramatizations of young couples ready to lose their virginity. The colours may have faded to red, but the issues facing these kids frankly haven’t changed much in 50 years. Be prepared to hear the word “intercourse” a brainwashing amount. A digital code is tucked inside the keepcase of this reissue, available in both standard and steelbook packaging.

117 minutes (TV)/133 minutes (UV); R; UHD: 1.85:1 (2160p/MPEG-H, Dolby Vision/HDR10), BD: 1.85:1 (1080p/MPEG-4); UHD: English Dolby Atmos (7.1 TrueHD core), French DTS 5.1, Spanish DTS 5.1, BD: English 5.1 DTS-HD MA, French DTS 5.1, Spanish DTS 5.1; UHD: English SDH, French, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish subtitles, BD: English SDH, French, Spanish subtitles; BD-100 + BD-50; Region-free; Universal

[i] Apatow says he had Andy burst into song rather than show him having sex with Trish to express that sex is different–not merely sex–when you’re in love. Isn’t that basically meaningless, though, given that he robbed Andy of the opportunity to learn this for himself?

[ii] In and of itself, however, this reference is hilarious.

[iii] Frankly, if you’re someone capable of landing Carla Gallo and Laura Bottrell, you get right back on that horse.

[iv] To say nothing of his newfound bros, whose intrinsic value is pretty much lost sight of as they fulfill their fairy godmother function.