The Judd Apatow brand of comedy has dominated the genre
for the better part of the last ten years. His influence extends far beyond the
handful of films he’s directed himself into a host of other films that he’s
also produced, many of them featuring actors he’s fond of using in his own
films. His films don’t go for the simple gross-out and zany laughs of the
Farrelly brothers. They rarely rely on shock value. They’re more like
situational comedy with believable situations, unlike what you get from your
average popular TV sitcom. His writing is often insightful, replete with astute
observations of human behavior, even if it’s usually from the eccentric limit
of the spectrum. In his latest (only his fourth as writer and director) film, This Is 40, he returns to peripheral
characters created for his 2007 comedy Knocked
Up, crafting a story around a married couple with two daughters and their
attempts to deal with their changing lives as they reach middle age.
