User Reviews

Overall, I enjoyed this film. I liked the leads and thought they had good chemistry, and while not as funny as, say, American Pie, I did find many of the jokes amusing.

However, there was one aspect of the film that really bothered me, which I notice has been mentioned by others as well.

(SPOILER WARNING)

Now, if a woman was handcuffed to a bed and sleeping and somewhat delirious and her ex-boyfriend showed up and had sex with her, when she is clearly in no position to give consent, few people would hesitate to label that as rape, and it certainly would not go without mention and condemnation in the film. Yet Nicole rapes Matt, and the only issue that seems to arise is how he screwed up. Excuse me? Granted, blaming the rape victim is not a new concept, but one would hope in this day and age it doesn't find its way into films, at least not without suitable counter statements being made. Male rape is a serious issue that is rarely dealt with as such, and movies like this tend to reinforce the erroneous belief that male rape doesn't exist, except in prison, or Deliverance. Maybe we shouldn't expect this movie to have any great social impact, challenge the views of the establishment, but acknowledgement that SOMETHING wrong had happened (other than Matt "screwing up") would have been nice. I seriously hope Nicole didn't get to collect on her bet.

Also, someone suggested that it was unrealistic for Matt not to have woken up before he had an orgasm. I'm not a guy, so I can't speak from experience, but there are such things as wet dreams. It seems to me that was essentially what Matt had, only unbeknownst to him, he had a little help. (That's actually what I found unbelievable; surely he would have long since had a wet dream on his own. But it's a movie.)

SPOILERS Each year, we all claim we're going to give up something for Lent. Whether for religious reasons, physical reasons or even for a bet, we all have attempted, and mostly failed, to sacrifice those things we need the most. It'd be interesting to know how many have attempted to sacrifice sexual activity for that time. In 2002's '40 Days and 40 Nights', Josh Hartnett's character tries just that. Crammed full of sexual reference and incredibly dumb moments, '40 Days and 40 Nights' is saved from the oblivion where it so obviously belongs by the pure fact that it is occasionally entertaining. Yes it never makes you fall off your seat in laughter, and the characters are incredibly shallow, but more often than not, you can't help but find yourself smiling.

Matt Sullivan (Hartnett) is a mess. Never recovering from his last girlfriends rejection, he leaps from bed to bed only to find himself suffering psychological trauma and hallucinations. Deciding he needs to get his head sorted, Matt decides that it is time to give up sex. Thus for the 40 days and nights of Lent, he gives up all sexual activity. Including personal relief into the decision, Matt finds temptation constantly around the corner, not least from the fact that he has a new girlfriend in the shape of Erica (Shannyn Sossamon).

Firstly, lets ponder the impossibilities involved with '40 Days and 40 Nights'. There's the fact that at one point he makes Erica orgasm using a flower, a fact that women will happily condemn at a moments notice (although most have probably tried after watching this film). There's also the fact that if a man goes from constant sex to no relief of any kind, that he's not going to have a say in the matter. The body will find a way to make him let off steam. The fact that for the entire time Matt lasts in the film, he never once experiences any sort of wet dream (as would happen in such a sudden 'cold turkey' situation), is just evidence of how little the creators thought this premise through.

Away from practical impossibility, the film also suffers from the predictable fact that it is often incredibly crude. Whether it is a hot office worker spreading her legs on the photocopier or Matt's hallucinations of naked women, the film is never afraid to lower the tone beyond sensible parameters. At just over an hour and a half long, it is just one long smut joke, and it's doubtful 'Confessions of a window cleaner' had this many sexual references.

All the characters are also incredibly shallow individuals. Obsessed with sex, every single girl offers herself to him in return for the possibility of winning money. At the same time, all of his friends, rather than supporting him, ridicule and humiliate him with an online betting syndicate. There's not an individual in the film that doesn't seem to be sex obsessed and superficial. This isn't real life, this is some sort of nightmarish fantasy.

So where do we go from here? There's so many criticisms about the film, there surely can't be any saving grace? Well, against all better judgement, there is. You see, whilst the film is crude, flawed and dumb, it is also at times entertaining. We're not talking hilarious or anything, but it does sometimes make you smile and enjoy it. You watch the story unfold, you really don't care for any of the characters, and yet you just can't turn it off. The film hooks you in and subjects you to ninety minutes of torture. Yet once it's finished, you do find yourself happy and content by what you've seen. It's always annoying when something like this happens, but when the story is really this bad, you find yourself even more frustrated.

Rude, crude, physically impossible and woefully shallow, '40 Days and 40 Nights' is not a good film. So it is with a heavy heart therefore to confess that you might actually enjoy it. It's a guilty pleasure. It's a film which is so inexplicably bad, and yet for some unknown reason, you find yourself occasionally smiling through it. You feel like the ninety minutes have been worthwhile, even though they haven't, and you genuinely believe that the film is worth anyone's attention. This is the evil of Hollywood at it's most pronounced and it's an annoying fact of life. You should hate this film, but you'll think you like it.

Spoiler:

While most of the offensive and insulting material in this film is unsurprising and rather dependent on one's moral point of view I have to agree with HEP632 and Malmir comments regarding the final scene with the lead character and his ex-girlfriend. It is inexcusable that this rape scene is treated so casually.

WARNING: Major spoiler ahead!

I thought Josh Harnett was good in this...considering. It was an OK movie in some ways, and it's encouraging that people of the level of insight/maturity of the screen writer (=low) can actually succeed in Hollywood(!?!), but...

Is it just me, or was anyone else blown away by the fact that his ex-girlfriend maliciously RAPED him?! She forced herself on him while he was unconscious and tied down... He was upset about it, didn't want it, and it wrecked his life ... but nobody said boo about it. AND then his real girlfriend LEFT him because of it.

Imagine the tables turned: Semi-conscious girl is handcuffed to a bed, ex-boyfriend enters her apartment without permission, forces himself on her as an act of aggression purely to hurt her and damage her life... Then her actual boyfriend leaves her because she got raped ... and nobody reports any of this to the police or even hints that it was, er, bad? Can't we do better than this in this day and age?!

It's also ridiculous the way ordinary girls behave in the movie; all of his office colleagues turn into sex workers, and extremely sexually aggressive ones at that. Real women just don't behave that way (very rarely), so I believe that it all reveals, as usual, something pretty 'interesting' about the psyche of the writer (and director).

Because in other respects it's a 'nice' movie and Josh Harnett is kind of sweet, it's easy for these serious issues to slip under the mental radar of many viewers, especially young ones, so it's a bit of a worry to me...

OK, so the movie wasn't great. Not bad, but not great either. I'm sure you've read a million plot summaries by now. Some good laughs, some cheesy dialogue...

(what follows is a spoiler, but I recommend you read it before seeing the movie) And then comes the rape scene.

Thank you to all the other comments posted acknowledging that rape is bad. Having non-consentual sex with a bound, drunk, delirious ex-lover? This is what passes as OK in Hollywood these days? The worst part is the fact that not only is the fact that it was rape never mentioned in the rest of the movie, but the victim is held responsible! I actually signed up for an IMDb account JUST to condemn this film. I'm sickened by having watched that filth.

It doesn't take much to get me to go to a movie, and I had high hopes for a movie with a) Josh Hartnett, and b) a clever premise. I looked forward to insightful and funny commentary about the relationship between sex and love and men and women in our post-modern world. What I got was breasts. Lots and lots of breasts. While the movie does a fairly good job (by Hollywood standards) of including a panoply of attractive women instead of a cookie-cutter ideal, the women are ultimately reduced to meaningless bodies that crave the "power" that sex supposedly gives them.

WARNING: WHAT FOLLOWS IS A COMMENT ABOUT THE END OF THE MOVIE, WHICH IS SOMEWHAT RELEVANT TO THE PLOT. SO DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW.

I could go on in that vein for hours, but what REALLY made me almost walk out on this film is the fact that Matt, the hero, is RAPED by is ex-girlfriend in the final minutes of the movie. Did nobody at the studio recognize that act for what it is? If the gender roles were reversed in that scene, it would have totally changed the mood and content of the film. As it was, I kept waiting for Matt, or ANYBODY, to call the police. Instead, movie goers get a happy ending where Matt's new girlfriend finally FORGIVES HIM FOR BEING RAPED. Hooray for Hollywood.

I guess it's not even safe to go to romantic comedies anymore. Sigh.

Over the years there have been many chauvanistic male movie characters who produce stereotypical images to the viewers. However if we look at 40 days and 40 nights and flip the plot around so that it is a girl who has to go the aforementioned length of time without having sex and we no longer have a comedy but an extremely offensive movie.

***PLOT (if you can call it that) SPOILERS!!!!

Take the scene where the girl tries to seduce him on the photocopier or the two girls in the store room who kiss. I am not a prude in any way but if those scenes were reversed and it was a female on the receiving end then the scenes would have had a far darker meaning. And lets not even go near the scene at the end where the ex-girlfriend ruins the mission so to speak. Once again flipped around this would surely be rape. Which begs the question is it funny? I don't think so.

Yes it is only a teen comedy and maybe I should lighten up somewhat but where the American Pie films had a certain charm and illustrated the prat falls for both men and women, 40 days and 40 nights went for morally questionable gags to sell the movie.

SPOILER ALERT!

The first half of the movie is okay, the idea is fine but the ending is... I am shocked, the protagonist is clearly raped by his ex- girlfriend but in the movie it is shown as okay, RAPE IS NEVER OK! If it was the other way around and a man had sex with his ex-girlfriend while she was asleep and tied to a bed; he would be called a rapist and send to jail or the movie would never had been made because it says that rape is OK. The movie doesn't even discuss the issue, it is taken for granted that what happened was OK or legal, and he has to apologize for being raped afterwords. This movie shows how a man can be raped by a woman but say that it is no big deal. Another thing is, the movie goes too far with the protagonist's abstinences, suddenly there is naked women and boobs everywhere it is just too much and too vulgar. I apologize for typos, etc.

Unless you are a shallow person who thinks sex is something that's bad yet funny, avoid this movie.

(Spoilers, but trust me you are gonna want to read this.)

In the last reel of the movie, the main character hand-cuffs himself to his bed in order to prevent himself from having a little self pleasure. His ex-girlfriend barges into his apartment, sees him sleeping like this and RAPES him! Yeah, pretty horrible eh? Of course he is blamed because all men are sex pigs and can't be raped, right?

Anyway, some of it is so-so funny, but still the ending is one of the worst I've ever seen.

Hollywood and their incredible shallowness wants it's viewers to care a lot for the main character in this film and it's because he's good looking. Nothing more than that and I took an instant disliking to this ridiculous attempt at comedy and the rest of the characters are portrayed as either vapid or moronic. Story is about Matt Sullivan (Josh Hartnett) who is having a very difficult time getting over his breakup with Nicole (Vinessa Shaw) and he goes out with several girls but they don't amount to anything and he becomes disgusted by his own behavior. Matt decides to give up sex for Lent and at first he seems okay with it but as time goes on it gets very difficult and while at the laundromat he meets a new woman.

*****SPOILER ALERT*****

Matt meets Erica (Shannyn Sossamon) and they have an instant attraction to one another but he has a hard time explaining his actions when he starts acting weird but she finds out the truth when Matt's co-workers put his plan on a website and place bets whether he can last the whole duration.

This film is directed by Michael Lehmann who has helmed two pretty good films (Heathers, The Truth About Cats & Dogs) that deal with relationships and human interaction but he has also directed some awful films (Hudson Hawk, Meet The Applegates, My Giant) and I certainly believe that this attempt belongs in the latter. The film is basically an attempt to showcase Josh Hartnett and take advantage of his looks which is fine but the script makes his character so nice that he's just a complete bore. Are we really supposed to feel sorry for him because he's not getting laid? Is not getting any for 40 days that long? If it is I definitely live in another universe and basically I cannot relate to Hartnett's character on any level, and I'm a single guy! Every female that works in the same office as Hartnett is smoking hot and this is an office that easily has no idea what sexual misconduct is. Hartnett is not a bad actor but when he's cast in these cutesy boy roles he's ingratiating. With the exception of Sossamon who gives an earnest attempt the rest of the cast is portrayed as uncaring jerks who seemingly have embraced their shallowness. If your looking for a smart and sophisticated comedy than keep walking because this lame film has a script that is totally devoid of anything resembling wit and intelligence.

This is mostly a superfluous movie based on a rather idiotic plot idea, with not much originality in the script and rather untalented actors. I have no idea why I even bothered watching it back then. But the main reason why I gave it the minimum rating was really the unbelievable awful ending.

!!! Spoilers ahead !!!

Yes I will spoil the ending.

!!! Stop reading already if you don't want to get the end spoiled !!!

The final actions in this movie is a rape of a man who was helplessly bound to the bed, by his ex-girlfriend, and than that man seriously having to apologize about that to his girlfriend, who instead of helping him blamed him for being a crime victim.

If you are seriously having trouble understanding whats wrong this ending, then just invert the genders. A woman in the place of the man would have been a rape victim, and the man as a boyfriend would have the urge to run after the other man for some serious beating up.

Personally, in the position of the man, I would have immediately called the police and filed my ex-girlfriend for rape. Also immediately dropped my current girlfriend for not helping me and even blaming me for getting raped while I was completely unable to fight back at all.

It the exactly the same logic as those Islamic idiots who want to stone female rape victims to death for having committed adultery. But the script authors where seriously believing the audience would buy that. What the heck ?

!!! End of spoilers !!!

This is definitely one of the worst endings in all of movie history.

It is self evident that the makers of this movie have never tried to do what they have the protagonist of the story attempt. They make it out as if it's some sort of unattainable fantasy vice a lifestyle choice. 40 Days and 40 Nights is based off a singular idea: men can't live without sex. Actually, it's based off a more basic idea than even that: men can't control themselves. This movie contains an attempted drugging, sexual harassment, sexual molestation, and outright rape and we're supposed to just laugh it off because it happens to a man. And as we all know, men can't go more than 7 seconds without thinking about sex. This is a horrible, propaganda filled, hateful little piece of indoctrination that deserves the death penalty at the very least.