REVIEW
40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS
Starring Josh Hartnett, Shannyn Sossamon and Vinessa Shaw
Directed by Michael Lehmann
Opens Friday, March 1
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Billing itself as a no-sex comedy, 40 Days and 40 Nights is the story of Matt (Josh Hartnett), who gives up sex and all things sexual for Lent. He makes the vow in the wake of a bad break-up, a series of disastrous one-night stands and the discovery that his ex is engaged. Typically, the minute Matt commits to abstinence, he meets Erica (Shannyn Sossamon), his ideal woman.
Most of the time, this movie is funny, naughty and sharp. It's also thoroughly contrived and so ultra-hip that it could become a period piece: stunning Internet whiz kids groove around San Francisco laundromats, work in open-plan office havens and live in gorgeous old apartments strewn with colourful lamps and Paul Frank merchandise. It's a sunny, sexy world, where the idea of 40 nookie-free days is so unthinkable it becomes a fixation for everyone who knows Matt. Still, hyperbole is funny.
What prevents this movie from being harmless and enjoyably crass is its gender double standard, which is at best irritating and at worst irresponsible. Apparently, when women sexually harass men in the workplace it's cool and amusing, and better yet, when a woman rapes a man it amounts to a minor plot twist rather than a form of criminal assault. Perhaps I'm making too much of what is essentially a dirty movie, but its "climactic" scene takes it to a political arena that it probably hadn't intended to enter. For a no-sex comedy, this one's kind of fucked up. |
