40 Days and 40 Nights is a 2002 romantic comedy about a young man who vows to stay celibate during the forty days of Lent, but finds the girl of his dreams and is unable to do anything about it.
Oscar-winning visionary director William Friedkin once said, “I really think that sex always looks kind of funny in a movie.” For the most part, he’s right, the writhing, undulating bodies we watch on screen rarely ever all that convincing, the movies either going to great lengths to over romanticize or eroticize the um … ins and outs of it all, or off in the other direction in trying to make it awkward or dreamy. Think of the differences in how sex is played out in movies like Basic Instinct to Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, raw, savage and full of candles to unicorns in space. I’m guessing most of us are somewhere in between. Hopefully with less ice picks.
In Michael Lehmann‘s 2002 rom-com 40 Days and 40 Nights, sex is meant to be funny. Not even the actual act of sex but all the tasty bits that lead up to it. We meet Matt Sullivan (Josh Hartnett), a handsome, website designer who is in love with Nicole (Vinessa Shaw), who has, unfortunately for him, moved on, leaving him alone and obsessed. He goes on a string of one-night stands but when things should reach a certain, well, climax, he’s not exactly up for the challenge. Instead, he hallucinates that his ceiling is cracking opening and a black void is about to swallow him whole. Metaphor much?
For help, he visits his brother John (Adam Trese) at the local church, he studying to be a priest. It is during one of the meetings in the confessional that Matt realizing Lent has begun and so, naturally, decides to abstain from sex for 40 days and 40 nights. And not just sex but anything related to it. No kissing. No biting. No licking. And, you know. Alone sex.
That’d be all okay except for two things. One, his ‘pals’ at the website company decide to secretly take bets, then make a webpage (with his name and picture) about it, spreading quickly over the internet. Nice. Two, he’s just met a great girl named Erica (Shannyn Sossamon) at the laundromat and finds himself hot and bothered. Her job? She works at a dot com cyber blocking service, nixing sex sites. What’s he to do?
So the premise is sort of interesting, though the first issue is of course, 40 days and 40 nights isn’t really much of gap for many people when it comes to having sex so already, a huge chunk of the audience is probably thinking, “40 days? Do twice that and then we’ll talk.”
Fine, Matt’s hot and girls swoon so giving up getting laid is a sacrifice, especially since the lovelies come at all hours. Naked hotties take to his bed like candies from a Pez dispenser. When he takes the plunge to go dry, suddenly the world around him falls even further into a plot out of a porn flick. Girls at the coffee shop (he fantasizes) seem cast right from couch, sucking down bananas and falling out of their tops. Women (for real) at the office try to take back their power by offering him a threesome. His dad (Barry Newman), recovering from hip surgery shows off a list of sexual positions he can and can’t do. You know. Normal stuff.
Fine, it’s a light comedy, and actually, Hartnett is well cast, his natural charms and flustered take on the whole thing kinda fun. There’s nothing else to really believe about the film though, the stock of goofy friends (led by wildly overwrought Paul Costanzo) a collection of obvious blahs that do nothing to create any impact or consequence, other than being some truly awful human beings who globally bully their friend online (not to mention a few of them actually using the no-sex scheme to pick up girls … to get them in bed). Griffin Dunne shows up as Matt’s boss, who of course is also obsessed with sex and decides to follow his suit. It goes on and on.
Worse though is poor Sossamon, wasted in a role that sees a woman genuinely upset and offended that a guy she likes doesn’t want to have sex with her after their first date, then treating his attempt at personal abstinence at first like it’s some kind of affront to her, than an angry challenge before finally embracing his efforts and deciding to support him. We never really get to know her well, despite Sossamon’s flirty and honestly inviting performance. She’s great fun to watch and really should have been more pivotal in the story.
There’s also a weird ending, one that I won’t spoil but is entirely the wrong way in wrapping it all up, even if it’s sort of clear what the filmmakers are trying to do. It’s actually a little disturbing and more so in today’s climate, raising a number of ethical questions. Seriously. Swap the genders in this bit and there’d be a firestorm. It’s not that satisfying either, the emotional punch completely misplaced.
40 Days and 40 Nights is not entirely a misfire, but doesn’t have the backbone to really challenge Matt aside from a slew of obvious nudity and sexual innuendo that it sets up more titillation than serious personal reflection. Sure, it’s a light comedy and perhaps we’re not meant to think all that deeply, but the movie lacks any umph in giving the premise any weight.