Buttoned-down and mild-mannered, Carell tends to look like either a congenial high school teacher or a functionary just one grievance away from blowing like Krakatoa. The actor's tamped-down performance style, propelled by his heavy, lurching eyebrows, dovetails nicely with Apatow's relatively low-key direction. (Relative for a film with so many penis jokes, that is.) Outside of a mildly disgusting scene involving a regurgitated strawberry daiquiri, the two collaborators generally avoid the bodily-fluids humor perfected and almost exhausted by the Farrellys, which has become a tedious mainstream comedy cliche. Even so, Apatow and his very brave or very foolish star do manage to raise the comedy bar with an excruciatingly funny scene involving body waxing that trumps Jackass extremism and is a perverse testament to Carell's dedication to his art.
Like Wedding Crashers, The 40-Year-Old Virgin eventually shifts focus from sex to romance, and without the other film's wink-wink, nudge-nudge subtext. Andy finds a real, grown-up woman, a divorced mother played by the wonderful Catherine Keener, who sincerely takes to him, bachelor eccentricities and all. The commercials for the film give away far too many of its biggest, loudest jokes, including the body waxing and the sly sendup of the reflexive homophobia that has become a genre staple. What the ads can't (or don't) disclose is the genuine warmth and feeling with which the couple's romance advances.
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