This is not a bad movie, but I ultimately found it a little weird. Its director, Michael Lehmann, also directed the classic Heathers and The Truth About Cats and Dogs. 40 Days … is closer to the latter, at turns sweet, melodramatic, and just a little gross.

Basically, Josh Hartnett decides that in order to give his sex-crazed life meaning, he needs to give up all things sexual for lent. For a time, his life is better than ever, he’s more focused, etc, etc, but then he meets Shannyn Sossamon (basically playing the same character as she does in The Rules of Attraction, right down to the cute cap – interestingly, these movies share the same production designer too, Sharon Seymour). Of course, he doesn’t tell her about the whole vow of celibacy thing in a timely manner and gives her the impression he’s a little nuts and then when he finally does tell her, she overreacts, because hey, this is a movie.

It’s stuff like that that brings the movie down for me, just really hokey set-ups for scenes. Then there’s the usual male/female stereotype lines (eventually Hartnett’s vow gets out to everyone, and therefore everyone is betting on when he’ll crack while simultaneously making concerted efforts to make him crack – one scene has a typical blonde informing her friends “He’s a man, they revolve around their penis.”) I guess this is true for the main character, which brings me to the main thing wrong with the movie – we’re supposed to like Hartnett? The problem is, 40 days and 40 nights isn’t exactly a long time, lol. There are scenes in this movie where this guy comes across like Quagmire in “Family Guy”. It’s just a little creepy.

Having said all that, like I said, it’s not a bad movie. It has some nice lines, and Shannyn Sossamon is always great, even if she’s playing a familiar character. Maggie Gyllenhaal makes a brief appearance too.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 6th, 2005 at 10:43 am in 3 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.