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40 Days and 40 Nights
(Reviewed January 30, 2002, by James Dawson)
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I saw a screening of "40 Days and 40 Nights" in January, only four weeks into the new year. Yet even at this incredibly early juncture, I am quite confident that this steaming pile of insultingly stupid
cinematic shit will be at the very top of my "Worst of 2002" list. It's that bad.
Listen, I know how it is. Most times, when you hear a critic say that a movie is crass and vulgar and smutty and nearly as degrading for the audience to watch as it must have been for the
unfortunate actors to perform, you automatically think, "Yum! Sex! Must see immediately, if not sooner!" You assume that the reviewer is some clenched old persnickety prude who makes his pets wear
diapers to cover up their naughty bits. And, heck, most times you're probably right!
But this reviewer actually WRITES PORN FOR A LIVING. I've had stuff printed in nearly every issue of PENTHOUSE FORUM and PENTHOUSE LETTERS for years, on top of appearing
in more than two dozen other men's magazines. I absolutely love good, nasty, no-holes-barred, zero-redeeming-value smut...er, I mean, "erotica."
"40 Days and 40 Nights" is bad smut, so bad it will make your disappointed penis shrink in betrayed horror and crawl back inside your trembling body to die. It also is supposed to be a comedy,
but there is not a single laugh in the entire movie. It is the misbegotten spawn of last year's egregious, brain-dead "Tomcats," a vomitously awful filth-farce that topped my "Worst of 2001" list.
Josh Hartnett and that scary chick with a wart from "A Knight's Tale" (which also made my "Worst of 2001" list) star as a guy who gives up sex for Lent and the girl who makes him want to
break his vow. Josh has one of those screechingly annoying roommates that we are expected to believe is getting fresh tookie every night, in a poon paradise by the bay that apparently is located on
Hefnerworld. All of the twentysomething characters work at funky dot-com businesses, wear hideously ugly clothes never seen in real life outside of ambiguously gay fashion magazines, and act like
retards on a slow day. God, I can't go on. Even thinking back to this movie is making me flaccid and nauseous.
Watching Josh Hartnett wallow in this vat of syphilitic pus is shocking and tragic. The guy has proven in movies such as "O" and "Black Hawk Down" that he is more than just a teen-idol
heartthrob. He even had the distinction of giving the least embarrassing performance with excruciatingly bad material of any actor who appeared in "Pearl Harbor." His appearance now in "40 Days and 40
Nights" is the equivalent of a career shift from the Broadway stage to a peep-show booth. Mr. H, call your agent!
"40 Days and 40 Nights" should be rated "X"...for "excrement."
Back Row Grade: F minus, minus, minus...
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