This Is 40 Film Review

This Is 40 has had a huge round of publicity. Hailed as the "sort of sequel" to Knocked Up, I was expecting big things from director Judd Apatow.
Unfortunately, I was disappointed. It was long. Too long, the plot could have been cut down dramatically. When compared to I Give It A Year that I watched the week before, the laughs just weren't as many.
Both Paul Rudd (Pete) & Leslie Mann (Debbie) are hilarious actors, but I don't think the script was quite up to scratch. The premise of mid-life crisis is the perfect comedy plot line, but it just wasn't what I expected. The couple are bitten by the recession as Pete's record company spirals in to debt, and Debbie's (strange) clothes shop is being fiddled out of cash by the drug-crazed geek shop assistant (really strange). This is the backdrop to the couple's many rows as they come to terms with whether they really want to be together now they have reached 40.
All in all, I'd say wait for the DVD. It's a slightly forced sequel with no mention of the characters in Knocked Up; they don't even turn up to Pete's 40th Birthday Party which I think is odd. It would have been a much more convincing sequel with their cameos. And probably funnier.