This Is 40 featurette is the Apatowiest thing you'll see all week
Who's saying what
If you're anything like me, you've probably spent a while wrestling with how you feel about Knocked Up.
You know, the first time you saw it you howled with laughter and wept at the babies, then the second and third time you tittered politely, and by the fifth time it turned up on cable, you found yourself agreeing with Katherine Heigl's assertion that the film was "a little sexist" in its portrayal of women as unrelenting harridans who just want to harsh dudes' buzzes with their overactive uteruses (uterii?).
Evidently Judd Apatow himself was undeterred by such concerns, because as we are all now well aware, he has This Is 40 set for imminent release, as a "kinda sorta sequel" to Knocked Up.
And, if you were wondering just how closely This Is 40 would stick to the usual Apatovian script - cool dudes, uptight women, raunchy jokes relating to sex and/or bodily functions, and the eternal comedy of otherwise straight people taking hallucinogens - then this red band (i.e. probably NSFW, or NSFchildren) four-minute featurette should answer all your questions:
This Is 40 follows Pete and Debbie from Knocked Up, with a few more of that film's alumni along for the ride: "Paul Rudd plays Pete, Apatow’s own wife Leslie Mann plays Debbie and their real-life daughters play the couple’s children in the movie. Pete and Debbie continue to fight their way through their marriage, with Pete’s mounting money troubles from the record label he started adding to the pressure."
Of the inspiration for the couple's woes, Apatow told a LACMA screening, "Anything that’s really humiliating and embarrassing is from Paul Rudd’s life, it’s really things he’s done. So we would say it’s a third real, a third observed or from Paul and a third made up. So it doesn’t feel that personal, mainly because the more specific we go about details of our world, the more anyone who saw the movie said, ‘Oh, that exact thing happens to me every day'."
The film hits local cinemas January 17th.
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