40 Days and 40 Nights (2002)

How sad is this?

Great Film overall

From my favorite movies..

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

I'm not really sure why I never watched this when it first came out. All my friends had crushes on Josh Hartnett, so they rushed to watch it. I on the other hand never made it through, but I did manage to go see Hollywood Homicide in the theater. Anyway, this movie is full of people from the late 90s that were huge, that now I'm not sure what they are up to. Shannyn Sossamon, Paulo Costanzo, Michael C. Maronna, Vinessa Shaw. Okay, I have seen them in some other things, but they are not nearly as big as they were back then. Quick summary, Matt is having trouble sleeping with random women because he is hung up on his ex, Nicole. He decides to give up all things sexual related for Lent, to kind of cleanse the pallet. RomComs being what they are, he almost immediately meets a girl that he could really be into. It wouldn't be such a huge deal, except he has given up all forms of sexual activity, including kissing and masturbation. Holding off on sleeping with someone for a little over a month doesn't seem that crazy, but not even a good night kiss?!?! Long story short, I'm not sure if it was really that god, or if it just made me nostalgic for the time when I was as free as the characters.

Hollywood writers are largely egotistical, juvenile, spoiled, shallow, hedonistic, amoral, arrogant, and totally disconnected from the day-to-day world most of us "nobodys" live in. Once in a great while, something seeps into the scripts they write that's so extreme in it's reprehensibility it reveals their delusional view of the world. That's what happened with this movie, but since it wasn't a wildly popular blockbuster that was in the theatres for several months, it was mostly ignored. At the end of this movie a man is raped by a woman in a context that makes it clear that the writers think it's a good thing. Knowing the stupid plot of the movie doesn't make it any better. Matt (Josh Harnett) just had a bad break-up with a girl and decides he would get a better perspective on women and relationships if he went without sex during the 40 days of Lent, including kissing and masturbation. He meets a woman, but continues his experiment in sexual abstinence without explaining his experiment to her, just saying he wants a platonic relationship. I'll admit I didn't follow every detail of the plot and sub-plots (he's some kind of executive and has a lot of obnoxious roommates and co-workers) but I figure nothing could justify the rape at the end. There is a sequence where he's so aroused and frustrated he dreams he's flying through a landscape of CGIed breasts, which I guess is relatively imaginative. Near the end of the movie he goes to bed, as always handcuffed to the bedposts so he can't masturbate. His ex-girlfriend gets on top of him and RAPES HIM! If the sexes were reversed there'd be a public outcry about this movie that would be pretty considerable even though the movie wasn't extremely well- known. I think what the so-called writers think is that men having sex whenever they can get it and perpetually pursuing sex like mindless animals the rest of the time is the natural order of Nature and any man who goes against that is denying nature and is not a real man and deserves to be FORCED back into sexual activity, in other words deserves to be RAPED. In their minds, the abstinence is the twisted thing and the rape is the healthy thing. Of course movies are primarily entertainment and some people, mostly women I guess, would get a kick out of seeing a healthy, good-looking young guy constantly horny and teased and frustrated, but the movie doesn't even work on that dark level because Hartnett doesn't react the way most men would. Most of the other characters in the film are shallow, obnoxious twenty- somethings who act like 12-year-olds and I can't help thinking that this must be pretty close to what the writers act like. There are a lot of jokes about embarrassment over having erections at work. This isn't the worst movie ever made - that honor I think belongs to "Forrest Gump" - only because "40 Days and 40 Nights" is useful in the way it reveals the society-induced mental disorders of the "writers".

This film has a very basic but very funny story line. Simply guy gets dumped, has lots of sex but freaks out every time, decides abstinence is the answer, meets girl of his dreams, struggles for the time, fails because his ex-girlfriend is a complete bitch and ultimately realises he should have give up in the first place to get the girl he wanted. There are quite a few good laughs from this and the ways his colleagues try to make him fail are legendary. How the hell do they get over $15,000 worth of bets. Overall the film was funny and easy to follow and I rate it at 8 out of 10. Every person who slates this film must be blind and death. A basic and funny film is what was needed and that is what it is.

This is mostly a superfluous movie based on a rather idiotic plot idea, with not much originality in the script and rather untalented actors. I have no idea why I even bothered watching it back then. But the main reason why I gave it the minimum rating was really the unbelievable awful ending.!!! Spoilers ahead !!!Yes I will spoil the ending.!!! Stop reading already if you don't want to get the end spoiled !!!The final actions in this movie is a rape of a man who was helplessly bound to the bed, by his ex-girlfriend, and than that man seriously having to apologize about that to his girlfriend, who instead of helping him blamed him for being a crime victim.If you are seriously having trouble understanding whats wrong this ending, then just invert the genders. A woman in the place of the man would have been a rape victim, and the man as a boyfriend would have the urge to run after the other man for some serious beating up.Personally, in the position of the man, I would have immediately called the police and filed my ex-girlfriend for rape. Also immediately dropped my current girlfriend for not helping me and even blaming me for getting raped while I was completely unable to fight back at all.It the exactly the same logic as those Islamic idiots who want to stone female rape victims to death for having committed adultery. But the script authors where seriously believing the audience would buy that. What the heck ? !!! End of spoilers !!!This is definitely one of the worst endings in all of movie history.