40-Year-Old Virgin, The

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Buoyantly clever and amusing.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

Virgin is astoundingly astute but also wondrously clever, written with more care and joy than any hundred comedies to come out of Hollywood in years.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

It's an unconscionably funny sex farce that, by its end, turns into a tender and honest romance, an acute portrait of loneliness and, believe it or not, a musical. This is a movie Blake Edwards might have made.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Takes a premise that, in less competent, less empathetic hands, would have had the depth of a pancake, gives it a soul and turns it into a surprisingly sweet and funny ode to male friendship and middle-aged love.

Chicago Tribune Allison Benedikt

Yes, Steve Carell can carry a movie. Yes, Judd Apatow can direct a movie. Yes, we'll all relate to a middle-aged virgin. And yes, when an aesthetician yells to her assistant "we're gonna need more wax," you best run.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Rude, raunchy, uproarious, yet with elements that are surprisingly sweet.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Surprisingly insightful, as buddy comedies go, and it has a good heart and a lovable hero.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Probably the most sweet-spirited sex comedy ever made. It's pretty funny, too.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

Works on every level. The humor and language are as crude as an R rating allows, but Carell and Apatow's script is so hip, funny and - yes - innocent that it's never offensive.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

Hilarious and imaginatively crude with a surprising sweet and subtle aftertaste that prevents it from flopping, limp and brainless, into the sugary abyss of romantic predictability.

Premiere Ryan Devlin

Even in the service of silliness, no one plays tragic, desperate, and beautiful better than Keener, who together with Carell, makes this film both laugh out loud funny and humane.

The New Yorker David Denby

The 40-Year-Old-Virgin is a hit, I would warrant, because it’s truly dirty and truly romantic at the same time, a combination that's very hard to pull off.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Funny and realistically romantic, but almost never at the same time.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

This is a superb, delicately calibrated comic performance: Carell never allows the character to swerve into excessive cuddliness.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

What keeps The 40-Year-Old Virgin out of Rob Schneider territory, however, is: 1) the fact that it's pretty darn funny, and in a way that feels consistently real, and 2) the fact that it's actually an excellent date movie.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Even a starring role in the American version of the British show "The Office," which has given Mr. Carell a higher profile, conveys neither his sheer likability nor his range as an actor, both crucial to making this film work as well as it does.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Apatow's film succeeds in having its virginity and losing it, too. Like "Wedding Crashers," it purges its cynicism with romanticism.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Steve Carell, best known as a team player on "The Daily Show," "The Office" and such movies as "Anchorman," earns top-banana status as Andy. He is flat-out hilarious.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

A lot of the credit for what's right with 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin goes to the screenplay, which Carell and Apatow wrote. They like these characters and, when it matters, they dare to give them feelings, none truer than Andy's.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It's not great moviemaking -- it isn't as accomplished or funny as the best of the Farrelly brothers' films, say -- but it's got real appeal.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub

A love story that gets the single male culture down so honestly and unapologetically that it can't help but push the boundaries of political correctness.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jason Anderson

While "Wedding Crashers" ultimately succumbs to endorsing the mushy romantic clichés that it spends the rest of the time ridiculing, The 40-Year-Old Virgin offers a wiser take on the anxieties, negotiations and expectations that surround love and sex, particularly for people who've been burned before.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Carell accomplishes the task of being sweet-natured without becoming cloying.

Wall Street Journal Joanne Kaufman

The jokes fly fast and sometimes very funny. They are, more often, crude and homophobic. Still, a genuine sweetness lurks.

Village Voice Jessica Winter

The Virgin script occasionally resets a gold standard for refined crudery.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

Isn't quite a home run: The visually flat film leans on a pop culture crutch that probably won't age very well, and the finale – while terrifically funny – feels piped in from another, far sillier movie.

Variety Brian Lowry

Crude, sophomorically homophobic but frequently funny, pic also overstays its welcome a bit and indulges in some juvenile excesses. All told, though, The 40 Year Old Virgin delivers enough belly laughs.

Slate David Edelstein

Too long, too sexist, and too--shall we say--flaccid. But it has its moments.

Time Richard Schickel

Funny in its deplorable way.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Sticking to one joke in an unconscionably long film makes for a very stale, witless and repetitive comedy.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Fun without ever being particularly funny, this one-joke comedy-of-bad-manners features a hero who will either tickle your funny bone or make you vaguely uncomfortable.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Carell and Apatow collaborated on the script; it does manage a few laughs, but the characters seldom progress beyond the two-dimensional.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

In a textbook example of the have-it-both-ways ethos of self-loathing narcissism, Carell has succeeded in creating a character of old-fashioned decency in a movie that otherwise flouts it at every turn.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A calculating crowd-pleaser aimed squarely at the under-25 crowd, who can feel free to add a star or two to my rating.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Judd Apatow brings no cleverness or wit to his one-joke situation, and he can't give it the kernel of credibility that even a low comedy needs to sustain itself for a feature length.