40 Days and 40 Nights
|
List Price: Our Price: $3.48 You Save: $6.51 (65%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Canada
Movie Reviews of 40 Days and 40 Nights
Movie Review: Lent has never been so hard (Get it?! See what I did there?...heh...*sigh*)
Summary: 3 Stars
Matt (Josh Hartnett) has just gone through a rough break up with his girlfriend Nicole and is flying through new girls to try and help his pain. To his dismay though, no amount of sex can get Nicole out of his head. A little later he finds out that his ex is now getting married to a guy she barely even knew for 2 weeks. Matt snaps and tries to get help from his brother who is just about to become a priest. Matt then comes to the conclusion to give up sex and any other kind of sexual pleasure for lent. 40 Days and 40 Nights of pure abstinence.
Of course once he begins his trek of the impossible, he happens across a pretty and interesting girl named Erica (the ever so beautiful Shannyn Sossamon). He doesn't want to tell her about his vow because it's kind of embarrassing and also because he doesn't want to seem weird. Don't worry though because of course she's going to find out since all of his friends have created a pot luck to guess what day he's going to, get some relief. Oh...and they've also posted it on the internet for everyone in the world to bet on also. As the days and nights go by, Matt keeps getting tempted more and more from not just his new girl, but from workmates, friends, and even complete strangers just drinking some coffee.
40 Days and 40 Nights feels a lot like a `wannabe' Judd Apatow movie, but just not as funny (if you're into Apatow's movies that is). And I really do think it's because of the love angle in the movie. I think if it hadn't been for that, this could've been a lot funnier. But hey, that's just my opinion. There are still some pretty funny moments in the movie, but I just think it could've been better.
In the end, I would give it a rent. It might even be a fun date movie (maybe not a first date movie for some...hehe). I had a good time with it.
P.S. When this movie first came out it related SOMEWHAT to an experience I had just a few months earlier, so of course I thought it was pretty funny at the time. I had gone overseas in Oct of 2001 for 9/11. I went over to help set up an air base, but I only had to be over there for a month and a half. So basically, yeah... I did go without...well... anything for about the same time as Matt did. And yeah, there was some pain and anguish, but it wasn't nearly as bad as he had it at the end with the shakes and twitches and all. But I will say it was pretty painful and I swear some of the things he'd see (like when he was on the bus or in the coffee shop) were things I was seeing. What a happy reunion I had with the girl I was seeing at the time when I got home...hehe.
Movie Review: The Mood Killer
Summary: 3 Stars
For ill-sorted and unbelievable reasons I made a vow that I wouldn't write another review for Amazon.com for forty days and forty nights, and for awhile I stuck to it, but eventually like all guys my hands started unconsciously to head south for the keyboard and here I am.
40 Days and 40 Nights is set here in San Francisco, so I give it three stars just for that, and director Michael Lehmann (who is from here) knows just the right corners and hills from which to sprinkle the film with an unusual beauty of texture. Though some of it must have been filmed in Vancouver or somewhere, for parts of it just rubbed me the wrong way (sorry). In any case you all know the story how spurned by cruel, selfish Nicole (Vinessa Shaw), our hero Josh Hartnett decides to lay off all sex, even sex with himself, and all would have been fine except that he is surrounded by the biggest pig pack of friends I've ever seen in a movie, led by Paulo Costanzo who seems to be channelling Nixon here, Nixon at his most Machiavellian. These friends make life miserable for Josh and I for one was appalled he didn't slam the door on all of them once his ordeals were finished. With friends like Paulo Costanzo, who needs enemies? Well, the movie just isn't as interesting as it thinks it is, and the sweat pouring from Josh's temples suggest a level of suffering that might have worked in Schindler's List (he fantasizes himself as Christ tempted in the desert, and a visual cue shows him as Christ crucified). If it weren't so heavy-handed it might have been fun to watch him run the obstacle race to happiness, but I don't know, somewhere along the way it lost its fire.
San Francisco also has more people of color than this film suggests--way more. And it has people in it older than 29, even working people. Here everyone is white and works for web companies who also hire a token Asian here and there. It's bizarre. The best thing in the movie is its stars, and even that has to be qualified by saying that for Josh Hartnett and Shannyn Sossamon, 40 Days and 40 Nights represented the peak of their careers, and everything they've done has been a disappointment commercially and critically since. But here they are utterly gorgeous and likeable and the chemistry between them rocks the screen. Wonder what happened? Couldn't Hollywood find anything worthwhile for either of them to do?
Movie Review: meh.....not very memorable
Summary: 3 Stars
A Film by Michael LehmannAfter breaking up with his girlfriend, Matt (Josh Hartnett) decides (after talking to his brother, who is going to become a priest) that he is going to give up something for Lent: Sex. Matt will give up sex for the 40 days and 40 nights of Lent. He's not just giving up sex, he's going to give up all forms of sexual intimacy. No kissing, no groping, nothing. I don't know about anyone else, but that doesn't seem like much of a premise to me. 40 days is only a month, a week, and a couple of days. That's not very long to go without sex. Naturally, by the end of the movie Matt is about to turn into a quivering, raging lunatic....all from not having sex for 40 days.
Be that as it may, I'll talk about the movie instead. There are some funny moments, and there are some sweet moments, but as a whole, the movie did not quite live up to the expectation that I had for being funny. We're not talking Oscar standard here, but this movie fell short (pun intended) of being good. Early on during his 40 days of abstinence Matt is doing laundry on a friday night. He meets Erica (Shannyn Sossamon) there and they start talking and begin a friendship. They start dating, but nothing intimate. Matt even freaks out and pulls back at an almost kiss.
At the same time this is going on, at Matt's office his co-workers are having a betting pool on how long he can hold out from sex. This spreads from a simple office pool to a web page about sex and Matt's sexual hiatus. Did I mention that Erica's job is to search the internet for pornographic websites so that the sites can be blocked with software? Naturally she discovers the site, freaks out, and this causes a rift between Matt and Erica. For some reason, when they started getting closer, Matt couldn't tell Erica that he didn't want to have sex or even kiss in the first 40 days they knew each other. Right.
The movie wasn't bad, it just wasn't that good. It was somewhat funny, maybe amusing is the better word. I would not recommend it to buy, maybe to rent.
Movie Review: Did they switch screenwriters?
Summary: 3 Stars
The plot of this movie has been described elsewhere, so I'll just get straight to my pros/cons in the movie.To me, it seemed like the person who wrote the script was not the same person who conceived it and began the project. Considering that this is a comedy-"romance" marketed at teenagers, the plot is actually rather interesting. There are some good ideas, and occasionally the movie has a burst of humor.
But then the rest of it is so chock-full of stupid ideas that I'm not sure what happened. It seems like any part of the script that attempted to say, "Hey... sex ISN'T everything" was erased and replaced by a lame joke.
I give it 3 stars because some parts of it were actually funny, it is an interesting premise, and because the acting is actually all pretty good - even Josh Hartnett, of whom I'm always suspicious.
But the way it switches it's message back and forth is irritating, and it seems to cheapen the point of the movie. Matt is supposed to be falling in love, yet they never seem to make a point of explaining what love is - in fact, the one time when they try to explain how Matt and Erica are in love is simply this: Erica can have an orgasm without Matt touching her.
My biggest complaint, though, out of all of this... is that Erica is quite easily the absolute least understanding girlfriend character in the history of cinema. It seems like Matt can't do anything without her considering it an insult. The worst example of this is
(Spoiler alert)
when Matt is practically raped and Erica finds him in the aftermath, still bound to a bed. Instead of being sympathetic in the least, she accuses him of cheating and then storms away, leading to Matt's solemn attempts to ask for forgiveness.
VIOLENT CONTENT - None.
SEX/NUDITY CONTENT - Plenty. Toward the end, Matt has visions of naked breasts everywhere, and since the premise of the movie involves sex you can expect that there's a lot of talk about it. Like, say, the entire screenplay.
LANGUAGE CONTENT - Pretty standard R-rated movie cursing.
Movie Review: Immature twenty-something comedy
Summary: 3 Stars
It was bound to happen. Josh Hartnett became a very hot property after "Pearl Harbor" so it was inevitable that he would get the lead in a romantic comedy. Unfortunately, it isn't a very good one. The screenplay is a typically sex-obsessed teen flick with twenty-something characters. Matt (Hartnett) is trying to get over his ex-girlfriend Nicole (Vinessa Shaw) by having sex with every woman he meets. When it dawns on him that this is superficial and fraught with anxiety, he decides to give up sex for lent. Of course, as soon as he makes "The Vow", he meets his dream girl Erica (Shannyn Sossamon) and he spends much of the ensuing time trying to come up with reasons not to have sex with her. Meanwhile, his co-workers and half the internet have a pool on what day he will give in. The comedy is mostly puerile, though there are a few funny lines sprinkled here and there.
Director Michael Lehmann has plenty of experience with vacuous comedy, having directed "Heathers" and "Airheads". He has done better on TV with "The Larry Sanders Show" and "The West Wing". Lehmann keeps it light, but the material is just too jejune for him to do much. To his credit, the cast seemed to be having fun with it.
Josh Hartnett is an excellent dramatic actor. However, as a buffoon he is just not that funny. His true skills emerge in the romantic scenes with Shannyn Sossamon where his sincerity shines through. Hartnett and Sossamon have terrific chemistry. There is a very sensitive and endearing quality about their scenes together. Sossamon is a bright young talent who might do well with the right scripts. She is lovely and engaging with good acting ability. Paul Costanzo provides much of the best comedy as Matt's sexually fixated roommate.
This isn't a terrible comedy, but it is rather immature considering the age of the characters and the target audience. I rated it a 6/10.