Director Report Card: Michael Lehmann (2002)

7. 40 Days and 40 Nights

In 1999, Jason Biggs fucked a pie. Gross-out gags like that, alongside other debatable merits, made “American Pie” a surprise blockbuster. That film's success would revive the teen sex comedy. There were sequels to “American Pie,” of course, alongside flicks like “The Girl Next Door,” “Van Wilder,” “Slackers,” “Tomcats,” and trips both “Road” and “Euro.” There was even a parody, the surest sign a type of movie had reached pop culture saturation. This disreputable subgenre even reached a certain level of critical respect once Judd Apatow got involved. Eventually, the 2000s teen sex comedy would die in the same place all overexposed fad genres do: The direct-to-video market, the halls of Blockbuster Video clogged with movies heavy on boobs and fart jokes but not brains. A few years into this misbegotten wave came “40 Days and 40 Nights,” which once again saw Michael Lehmann trying to enliven uninspiring material.  

Matt Sullivan works for a successful dot-com company. He's recently broken up from his girlfriend, Nicole. Though he has no trouble getting laid, he remains emotionally stuck on her. After discovering Nicole is engaged, Matt decides to make a change. He gives up all forms of sex for the forty days and nights of Lent. Literally the night after swearing off orgasms, Matt meets Erica. The two have an immediate chemistry together. His vow of abstinence is further complicated when his co-workers start a betting pool around it. Matt now has to romance Erica, maintain his commitment, keep his friends off his back, and not go crazy.

Referring to “40 Days and 40 Nights” as a teen sex comedy is technically a misnomer. All the characters are young professionals, in their twenties. Despite that, they all have a totally juvenile fascination with sex. The guys, both the young and old, constantly talk about sex. Erica works for a company that censors internet porn. His boss is an old horndog, talking about his sex life and seeing sexual scenarios in every image. Even his parents talk about sex! Doin' it seems to be the only thing his friends ever discuss. It seems unlikely to me that a bunch of co-workers would be as obsessed with their friend's sex life as these guys are. At one point, they even follow him into the public bathroom to see if he's masturbated. I think about sex plenty but all of this strikes me as excessive. It's been said that some guys think with their dicks. I think “40 Days and 40 Nights” was written with a dick.

Our hero in this copulation fixated story is a guy that has no problem attracting women. Matt is introduced having sex with a beautiful woman. He's in bed with another supermodel shortly afterwards. His pledge of chastity is complicated by random babes trying to seduce him. His trouble is actually that he's fucking too much to emotionally resolve his baggage for his ex. A protagonist doesn't always have to be relatable for a movie to be good. But I would say the majority of young men cannot relate to Matt's strife here. “American Pie” was about guys trying to get laid, which was maybe a factor in its popularity. A guy like Matt, a philandering lothario who picks 'em up and knocks 'em down, is not immediately endearing. In fact, he's kind of guy a lot of guys hate. Many men go far longer than 40 days without sex and the implication that such a stretch would be unbearable is kind of insulting.

Josh Hartnett stars as Matt. According to IMDb trivia – admittedly a less than reliable source – Hartnett attempted to replicate his character's abstinent lifestyle and gave up after twenty days. Hartnett is the type of blandly handsome actor a lot of nerds hated exactly because he was such a stud. Compared to a lot of his contemporaries, Hartnett definitely has limited range. There's a certain stiffness to his delivery no matter the circumstances. Yet, truthfully, Hartnett does his best. He's got a winning smile. As a physical comedian, he does pretty well. A scene where he catches his shirt on fire is a bit of decently executed slapstick. Hartnett manages to make the running gag of Matt building model cars, whenever he thinks about sex, mildly amusing. He plays Matt as someone who sex just happens to, instead of a guy who actively goes looking for. This at least doesn't make the character a sleaze ball. Yet it would take a star a lot more innately likable than Hartnett to overcome “40 Days and 40 Nights'” off-putting content.

A lot of sex comedies have not aged well. Movies packed with crude humor and designed to be wish fulfillment fantasies for teen boys are, unsurprisingly, frequently problematic. “40 Days and 40 Nights” is no different in this regard. The film is set in the dot-com industry before the bubble bursts and reflects that gross tech-bro corporate culture. The men and women in Matt's company are seemingly segregated by gender. The guys are constantly bragging about their sexual conquests. They seem to consider sex nothing more than a game of who can fuck more. Unsurprisingly, the boss is eventually depicted sexually harassing his employees – female and male, in fact – without any condemnation or irony. The entire movie is rooted in this rotten mindset. In fact, “40 Days and 40 Nights” might be a little worst than your average sex comedy because all its characters are ostensibly grown adults who should definitely know better. 

Of course, nothing makes old sex comedies more politically incorrect than their nonexistent respect of consent. Yes, “40 Days and 40 Nights” inevitably features a rape joke... And somehow it's worst than you might expect. After successfully getting through Lent without ejaculating, Matt's friend handcuffs him to his bed for reasons that aren't well defined. That's when Nicole, who wants him now that she can't have him, breaks into the house and fucks him while he's restrained and unconscious. Yes, the protagonist of this movie is raped by his ex-girlfriend. No, she is never punished for this horrible crime. Yes, Erica accuses Matt of cheating and blames him for what happened. He even has to apologize to her for unambiguously assaulted! This light hearted comedy features victim blaming, the myth that consent doesn't matter for men, and that sexual assault is no big deal. This, somehow, makes “40 Days and 40 Nights” equally offensive towards women and men. 

Obviously, “40 Days and 40 Nights” is an incredibly crass movies. There's an early sight gag involving semen and a condom. There's an extended joke about a spontaneous erection. Matt eventually begins imagining every woman around him naked, giving the movie its required gratuitous nudity. Yet I could almost accept all this if the movie committed to its sleazy misanthropy. Instead, “40 Days and 40 Nights” also tries to be a traditional romantic-comedy. Matt and Erica's romance is played totally straight. It has all the hacky writing of your usual rom-com, the couple being forced apart by contrived misunderstandings at all the expected points. Seemingly, the script wants us to be invested in these two actually getting together. Frankly, it's a bit insulting that the movie wants to have it both ways. Don't spend the majority of your run time reducing all the complexity of male/female relationships down to just fuckin' and then expect us to care about whether Matt and Erica fall in love at the end.

By the way, Erica is played by Shannyn Sossamon, underrated nineties siren. Despite sporting a series of truly unfortunate haircuts, Sossamon is as charming and alluring here as ever. The scenes where Sossamon and Hartnett meet in a laundromat and bond over drying sheets would almost be cute, in a movie less suffocatingly gross than this one. Unfortunately, Sossamon does not get out of this movie with her dignity intact. Matt and Erica do not consummate their relationship, because that's the entire premise of the movie. But that doesn't stop them from having a sex scene of sorts. The two strip down and Matt paws at her semi-naked body with rose petals. This, somehow, brings her to orgasm. I never doubted that the writer of “40 Days and 40 Nights” didn't understand women before this scene. Yet this uproariously goofy and un-sexy moment raises questions about if they even understand basic physiology. 

Sossamon, for whatever it's worth, is not the only likable performer who is humiliated during the film. Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Erica's best friend and roommate, forced to crack some embarrassingly randy dialogue. Griffin Dunne – who once played a much more likable horndog – appears as Matt's boss. The overly horny script sees Dunne drooling over every female he sees and climaxing in a bathroom stall. I hope he got paid well because I felt so bad for him. Vinessa Shaw is reduced to the worst kind of feminine stereotype here, a succubus who destroys men both by denying them sex and conquering them during it. The rest of the guys in the movie are total douche bags and the actors – who I'm sure are nice enough in real life – embody the parts wholly.

Sadly, the off-putting quality of “40 Days and 40 Nights” extends behind the camera too. The visual composition of the movie is frequently unpleasant. The camera jerks around, weird crash-zooms and unfortunate bursts of handheld footage, at random intervals. I can only assume this was done to incorporate some manic energy into the proceedings. It just results in making the film seem badly photographed. For whatever it works, I can see a little more of Michael Lehmann's trademarks here than in his last few movies. A dream sequences where Matt imagines himself flying over a sea of giant breasts does, if nothing else, have some of the same absurd qualities of “Heathers” or “Hudson Hawk.”

While reviewing “The Truth About Cats & Dogs,” I noted that the movie's soundtrack was frequently intrusive. This was not an uncommon feature of nineties rom-com, as I guess studios hoped they could squeeze a few more dollars out of a film if it had a hit soundtrack. The song choices in “40 Days and 40 Nights” are often distracting as well. INXS blares in one unimportant scene, while a mildly funky cover of “Loves Me Like a Rock' is plastered over another montage. The most baffling musical choice occurs when alt-rock hit “Wonderful” plays over a scene of Matt contemplating pornography. Because what makes you hornier than the guy from Everclear's broken childhood? An ear-splitting number from the Prozzak playing over the end credits is the final nail in the audiovisual coffin. I do like the Semisonic song included in one romantic montage, the subject of the song even lining up with the subject of the film.

“40 Days and 40 Nights” managed to be a modest box office success, grossing 37 million dollars against a 17 million dollar budget. The reviews were mostly negative, though Roger Ebert gave it a weirdly positive review. In the years since the film's release, few people have had cause to talk about it... Even the movie's writer, Rob Perez, seems to look back on the production with many regrets. When the film is remembered at all, it's usually to mock that ludicrous flower-assisted love scene. The past is really were an unfortunate farce like this belongs, where its skin-crawling sexual politics and pedestrian gags can be dismissed as acts of a less enlightened period. And these days, it’s impossible to watch the movie without thinking of the infamous NoFap subculture, a well intentioned movement that was quickly co-opted by he-man woman haters and spawned several disturbing spin-offs of its own. I doubt if even those guys are aware of this film. Even if “40 Days and 40 Nights” wasn't rapey and sexist, it still wouldn't be funny. [Grade: D]