Boys gone wild.(40-Year-Old Virgin )(Movie Review)

A Trojan horse of a sex comedy, The 40-Year-Old Virgin wouldn't be wholly out of place as part of an abstinence campaign. Teens hoping for sex scenes and naughty talk might be shocked by the message of restraint that is smuggled in along with the crude gags.

Granted, the sex scenes and naughty talk are there. This film earns its R rating, and its makers likely would recoil from being called responsible. But it is the movie's very commitment to capturing the raunchy camaraderie of immature manhood--the graphic patter, the leering pranks--that makes its eventual plea for something more mature feel authentic as well. If most abstinence videos shown to teenagers merely end up preaching to the choir, this might be a roundabout way of getting the choir some new members.

Steve Carell, the tightly wound and completely clueless boss on television's "The Office," expands on his dimwit persona as Andy Stitzer, the sexually inexperienced hero of this movie's title. As Andy explains to one of his co-workers early on, except for a few mishaps in his youth, sex never really happened for him, and he eventually just stopped trying, choosing instead a solitary life among the action figures and movie memorabilia in his low-budget apartment.

His co-workers, however, decide that deflowering Andy must become their number-one priority, thereby setting up the series of misadventures that comprise the bulk of the film. And so he has a depressing run-in with a drunken woman (Leslie Mann) at a nightclub. He has a frightening conversation with a female bookstore clerk who considers sexual harassment a form of pillow talk. Sex is more alarming than Andy ever dreamed.

What's curious about each of these encounters engineered by Andy's supposedly playboy friends, is the way they reveal the shallowness of the playboy lifestyle. Nearly everyone Andy meets gets plenty of action--or at least pretends to--but none of them is any happier for it. It is Andy, alone with his action figures, who seems content.

Not that the movie makers want him to remain a ...