Josh Hartnett IS Noah!

 Well, alas, no, 40 Days and 40 Nights is not the Bible story that its title suggests. It is, instead, as you probably know from the commercials and trailer, a movie about a guy who gives up sex "and anything sex-like" for the titular amount of time. Why that particular length? Well, if you're Catholic you might have already guessed, but it turns out it does have a biblical connection, though this time the New Testament, not the Old. Matt (Josh H.) gives nooky/nookie (both spellings are considered acceptable) up for Lent; 40 days was how long Jesus spent in a desert resisting temptation.
 Don't worry if you didn't know that; the movie will inform you. As a matter of fact, there is a lot of religion in this movie, which I certainly wasn't expecting. Matt frequently compares himself to Jesus when he feels his resolve weakening. Also, his brother is a priest-in-training, and there are many, many (I lost track) scenes of Matt "confessing" to him though really he's using his sibling as a free shrink.
 40 Days and 40 Nights is a competently made, amiable little movie. I chuckled a few times, to be sure. It boasts an EXTRAORDINARILY good-looking cast, and I don't just mean the leads. There are a lot of stunning women in it, and some not half-bad looking fellas as well.
  But even while watching it, a thought was running through my head:
  "No way is this worth anybody's nine dollars. Not even a "bargain matinee" price of six bucks."
  As a matter of fact, considering the massive amount of egregious, obvious product placement in 40 Days "Here, dude, take a Magnum! [instead of condom]", the closeup of Gear Magazine on the hero's coffee table . . . the movie should be discounted. The end credits say, "The producers wish to thank Apple Computer," but that should totally be the other way around. Apples are pushed so blatantly in this movie it makes their use in Independence Day look subtle. At one point, the gorgeous female lead of the movie starts to explain her job as an internet kid-filter screener: "Say you have a fourteen-year-old girl with an IMAC, . . ."
 This is definitely a wait-for-the-video movie. By the way, if you're a regular reader, you may note that that's the first time I've ever said that about a movie in any of the many, many reviews I've written for CountingDown. There's a reason for that: I believe movies should be seen on a big screen, the way their makers intended them to be seen. Of course the most obvious reason for that is that pan-and-scan video versions eliminate so much of the film. And while I know that most readers of this site know that, and probably are the types to buy widescreen when available, if you're just renting, they can be hard to find, if not impossible, especially if your only option is the neighborhood BlockBuster.
 But also, on a small screen it's just a lot harder to appreciate the work the director (and cinematographer) put into framing what you're looking at, or the work of the production designer, etc.
 However, with a film like 40 Days, it really doesn't matter. It already looks like it was made for TV. For a movie directed by Michael Lehmann, who did the full-of-flair Hudson Hawk, 40 is surprisingly visually uninteresting. And the sitcom-style writing (by Robert Perez) also says "small screen." This could be a long, expensively filmed version of Friends if Friends aired on HBO, so it could have bad words and a lot of bare breasts.
Actually, what it really, really reminded me of was MTV's Undressed. The degree of seriousness with which the movie's concept is treated matches that teeny-bopper show exactly. I.e., it's not treated especially seriously or intelligently, though it does have a happy ending.
  In addition to Undressed coming to mind while watching 40 Days, something else was nagging at me, about its look. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it was something having to do with the fact that, until about halfway through when we get a shot of the TransAmerica pyramid building, a San Francisco landmark, I couldn't figure out what city the story was supposed to be taking place in. It seemed to have a Chinatown, but it definitely wasn't New York. Scenes weren't populated enough for that. It wasn't until the very end of the credits roll that I got the answer: "Filmed on location in Vancouver."
 Okay, so it's set in San Francisco, played by Vancouver.
  Well, one of the reasons I couldn't figure out without that aforementioned massive visual clue that this was S.F. (or any other major American city for that matter) has to do with what I think is the lamest thing by far about 40 Days and 40 Nights:
  Every year there's a spate of stories about how Hollywood is (or isn't) still racist. Or homophobic. Well, Hollywood isn't really racist, at least in any active or conscious sense. Most well, many straight white folks in the movie biz could and would honestly tell you, "Hey, some of my best friends are black!/Asian!/gay!" (You will notice I didn't put "Latino" in there; that's because I don't think most studio folk actually could truly say that, though an enormous number of them can say, "Hey, my housekeeper is Mexican! And she lives with us! She's almost part of the family!" Which is a whole sub-problem in itself.)
 The people who make movies like 40 Days aren't prejudiced (well, I hope they're not; I haven't met them), they're just clueless.
  heir sins are sins of omission, not commission.
  Which is how we end up with a big screen representation of a San Francisco that is completely white and straight.
 You'll think I'm exaggerating. Nope. Aside from one of Matt's six or so office co-workers/buddies being Asian, and an Asian guy in another office scene who has two seconds and two lines in the movie, there is nobody who's not Caucasian in this movie.
 This would be laughable, except, honestly, it's more disgusting than amusing.
 Not because there should be some kind of "quota" system, where the hero/heroine has one forthright, upstanding black friend (for the guy)/sassy black girlfriend (for the gal), and an Asian in the office, and a funny, swishy flamer as the receptionist, like we have on TV.
  But because it's just ridiculous to try to pass off any major American city as looking like this. The movie might as well be set on Venus.
 And this movie has a very, very large cast. It also has a lot of semi-nude female extras wandering around in dream sequences, every one of them white.
  At one point Matt tells his roommate about all the gorgeous girls he tried to avoid looking at at a café: "There were 48 breasts there!" Uh-huh. And all of them white.
 It just boggles my mind that to the people who made this movie, especially director Lehmann and the casting people, the only standard of beauty is a white one.
  And then which parallel universe San Francisco is this without any gay people at all?
 I mean seriously, when people think of San Francisco, what do they think of? I bet it's typically, in this order: The Golden Gate Bridge. Cable cars. Fisherman's Wharf and great restaurants. And the fact that it has a lot of gay people! (Ghirardelli chocolate probably comes next, by the way, if you were wondering. Then Rice-A-Roni.)
  And before you start saying,
 "Well, why should the screenwriter have to bother to put in some gay character? That's not what the movie's about!"
 or "How do you know that there aren't gay characters in it, like in Matt's office, but it's just not important to the plot to mention it?"
  Matt has a lot of coworkers in his office (it's an internet company, an apparently thriving one, which would also seem to indicate a parallel universe), and to some degree we get to know all of them. And we learn that all of them are straight. Really.
 Oh well. There's actually nothing terribly realistic at all in 40 Days. In many, many ways it really does seem to take place in an alternate universe.
 Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing at all for a movie. Often I'll even say in my review, as I did for Rollerball, "If this was the real world, this spectacular action sequence couldn't happen, but blah blah blah . . ."
 There are a lot of films for which it's entirely appropriate to be unmoored from reality; the thing is, generally they're action movies (or Tom Green or early Adam Sandler movies).
 But what's the point of taking an idea for a story, which could have led to a genuinely thoughtful while still entertaining film, and treating it like MTV's Undressed, set in a fantasy world?
  We can't take any of 40 Days and 40 Nights seriously, even for a moment.
 First of all, for those of us guys who don't look like Josh Hartnett, going without for 40 days doesn't actually seem like some kind of impossible task.
  And the way it's supposed to affect Matt is stretched beyond all credibility. By the end, he's non-stop hallucinating. He can barely walk; he's supposedly a physical wreck. I say supposedly because, while everyone starts saying to him, "Matt, my god! What's wrong? You look awful!" he doesn't actually look any different! Though he does stumble a lot.
 And then ladies, don't take my word for this, ask a close male friend there is no way on Earth a sober, adult guy wearing boxer shorts and khakis would be UNAWARE that he's sporting a massive boner sticking out perpendicular to his body. Matt is presented in one scene as looking like he's about to carve a hole in the front of his trousers. When he enters a room and we finally see the object of attention, it's like watching what you know was filmed as a 3-D movie though you don't have the glasses, the way his erection looms towards us. It's simply impossible to believe that he wouldn't be feeling the intense pressure of his erection straining against his fly! (It's also amusing just how generously they "endowed" Josh with the prosthetic.)
  Also, it's interesting to note that not only are dot-com companies thriving we see two in the movie, both enormous, one with stunning glass walls directly overlooking the bay but they only have model-quality gorgeous people working for them. Apparently Matt's company pays more than Victoria's Secret is able to offer its models, because his female coworkers certainly seem to have stepped off their runway. Also, these women find the most practical work attire consists of form-fittingly tight low-cut blouses and ultra-mini miniskirts.
  And all the guys are handsome, except of course for the token fat guy, who of course is really dumb and the constant, deserving butt of everyone's jokes.
 This is the kind of movie where the evil ex-girlfriend is of course a total social status-obsessed bitch. Can you actually imagine in the real world someone introducing their fiancé to someone by saying, "David is the youngest executive vice-president at Morgan Stanley!" in a sing-song, bragging way which would be better suited to a phrase like, "Ha ha! Daddy bought me a Neapolitan popsicle and yours is only chocolate!"
 This is the kind of movie where a woman, who has just been engaged in incredibly energetic, completely unclothed (though we don't actually see anything) sex, where she was the one on, covers her body with a sheet in front of the guy she just practically raped. Why? Because her contract had a no-nudity clause of course!
 This is the kind of movie where parents, at the dinner table, talk in excruciating detail about their sex lives, to their children one of whom is a priest!
  Matt, of course, does during his period of abstinence meet a gorgeous, free-spirited girl who, of course, wants to have sex with him. Instead, though, because of his vow, they have a series of platonic dates. The idea of the movie is that because they got to know each other this way first, they know they're really compatible and it's not about the sex/the physical stuff.
  Except that's not what the movie portrays at all, though it thinks it does. First of all, the attraction between Matt and Erica (Shannyn Sossamon) is totally a physical one! As a matter of fact, the first time they meet, and pretty much fall in love at first sight, Matt doesn't speak a word out loud, though they're together a long time. (They're doing laundry. How's that for a meet-cute? I bet you've never seen that before in any, oh, TV commericals, movies . . . .) We know that because Josh and Shannyn are the two most gorgeous people in the movie that they're clearly meant for each other.
 Forget about the nonsense the movie tries to make us believe that they got to know each other through long talks and such. Because, perhaps because the screenwriter has no idea how to write a real, long conversation between two people interested in each others' minds as well as bodies, we never actually hear the pair getting to know each other.
 Oh, sure, we get montages, with, hey kids!!, popular music being played over the scenes!, of them on a "cute" date they take the bus around the city. Note to Hollywood people who apparently don't actually take municipal public transport: city buses are NOT romantic! They smell, are crowded and frequently stifling, and are always guaranteed to have at least one insane homeless person on them, periodically loudly declaiming about something, or just shrieking.
 And we see them at the ends of dates, when he won't give her a goodnight kiss at her door. (Actually, that is a genuinely funny bit; not knowing what to do, Matt gives her a high-five goodbye.) But we don't really get any evidence that the attraction isn't pretty much purely physical.
 And then of course at the end of the movie, and don't tell me this is a spoiler, they do finally get to have sex and hey, that's the end of the movie! What happens the next morning? And the morning after that?
Well, that would be a real movie.
Grade: B-/C+