K-SCORE: 42
Director: Michael Lehmann
Writer: Robert Perez
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Shannyn Sossamon, Paulo Costanzo, Maggie Gyllenballs, Vinessa Shaw, Keegan Connor Tracy, Jarrad Paul
Spoiler Level: Major
“Forty days pass, he succeeds or he fails, no one cares, movie over. Right? Tragically no.”
Matt Sullivan is a young man with no real problems. Women throw themselves at him constantly. He works one of those not-real office jobs doing advertising or some shit, and he makes enough money to afford one of those unrealistically large movie apartments in San Francisco. Naturally he decides to make some problems of his own, as people often do. In Matt’s case, he throws the ball a little short of home plate and can only come up with giving up sexual activity for lent. Forty days pass, he succeeds or he fails, no one cares, movie over. Right? Tragically no. Inexplicably a bunch of people take to gambling online about Matt’s own sexual restraint, putting up thousands of dollars of their own money on something that has no clearly defined rules and I guess can be, but really shouldn’t be, verified by other people. More so than the bet, the pathetically short period of abstinence causes problems with Matt who of course meets the girl of his dreams at a laundromat and gets her to fall in love with him by taking her on a disgusting public bus and refusing to get off. (Pun intended.) This encapsulates the first hour and a little of 40 Days and 40 Nights and should have any right-minded person smacking his or her forehead repeatedly to try to knock the idiotic premise and forced sexual humor right out of their brain where it is at risk of getting stuck.
THE SCOTT 200
Here’s the elevator pitch that sold this movie “Dude, there’s going to be a scene where Hartnett is imagining everyone he sees naked! Except there all gonna be hot chicks and the audience will see tons of boobs all at the same time!” If two hours of nothing is worth that scene, I encourage you to watch this … film. I give 40 days and 40 nights 40 out of 200 gaggles. I give myself 7 out of 10 thumbs-up for not confusing this film with the Anne Heche classic 6 days, 7 nights. I give Kyle’s review 5 out of 5 (mainly for discovering the earth-shattering plot twist!)
“I began to ponder the things female characters can get away with in fiction versus the things male characters can get away with, sex, power...”
Push past that. The film contains two absolutely awesome twists. As you’re falling asleep watching Shannyn Sossamon pretend to have an orgasm as an orchid flower blows delicately across her stomach, the filmmakers are preparing surprises. Shortly after that ecstasy moment but before the climatic relationship conflict that’s apparently required in all rom-coms, Matt is straight-up raped by a woman who also extorts all his friends and coworkers by rigging their betting game in her favor. No backlash whatsoever befalls this ex-girlfriend of his, and after she ravages a tied up, mostly unconscious Matt, she leaves the film forever. Interesting, I thought, and I began to ponder the things female characters can get away with in fiction versus the things male characters can get away with, sex, power, and all sorts of other college-essay themes - until, the really big twist.
The movie makes it seem like Matt’s roommate, played by a guy named Paulo Costanzo, also works with him at the online ad-making vaguely dot-commy company. Then at the end, Matt has all his friends over so they can listen to him sex-up saucy Sossamon for hours on end, and you see that the guy you thought was the roommate at the company is actually a different guy, played by a different actor, Jarrad Paul, and that the film just cast doppelgangers and never revealed it until the one weird scene at the end where the two characters are finally in the same place. They’re having me believe this guy and this guy are different people!
They fooled me. I never saw it coming. I really thought that those two characters that look identical and served same function were in fact one.
After this forty days and forty nights enduring the challenge of not masturbating, Matt will go on to change his name and move to a town in northern Alaska where he’ll endure just thirty nights (no days) of vampire attacks. What happens to his roommate, work friend, and girlfriend? Not sure about the former, but I like to think the latter is still stuck on that bus, shouting, “Hello?! I missed my stop. Is anyone there? Some guy told me he was taking me on a date but the date never ended. It never even really got started. Hello? I’d like to get off now.”