I will defend to my dying day, or at least for the rest of this week, that the work Judd Apatow is doing right now is vastly underrated and hopefully finds appreciation later in what will certainly be a career that continues long into his life. This is 40 is the latest installment in a filmography that has developed much like a stand-up comedian’s act. Louis CK talks a lot about the maturation of a comedian, who can start out telling dumb jokes about themselves and their life, but then with each new set they have to go deeper and deeper until they’re faced with confronting their own fears and faults and shortcomings.
Apatow has steered away from his more light-hearted material of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, and now he’s using comedy to examine some real issues he’s surely facing in his own life: getting older and maintaining relationships with his wife and children, who are also constantly changing. There’s some brilliant observational material in this new movie that can easily go unnoticed. I think people are expecting more laughs, which are still fairly consistent, but it’s the way Apatow directs the more serious moments that really catch my attention, and provide a dynamic contrast to his work that is rare for others who have tried to mix comedy and drama together.
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