Hollywood loves a bachelor. It makes sense that a town run by overgrown teenagers and creatively driven almost exclusively by men would revel in producing movies about awkward, average-looking guys who find themselves irresistible to women (all of whom are, of course, perfect physical specimens). It makes sense, too, that after years of producing films with shlubby guys paired off with hot women often half their age, some filmmakers might start feeling a little empty. They might wonder if, somehow, all the hot women, cool special effects and detached attitudes weren't enough. They might decide that what you really need is love.
That may be why detached, hipper-than-thou indie auteur Jim Jarmusch has Bill Murray as a profoundly lonely womanizer in his new Broken Flowers, and why comedy kingpin Judd Apatow, who's produced a number of Will Ferrell movies and was one of the driving forces behind the cult TV shows Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared, makes his directorial debut with the story of a lonely man, helpfully dubbed The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Both films are, in their own ways, midlife crisis comedies, movies about the strange, funny and pathetic things that happen to men who realize they've been devoting their lives to completely unfulfilling pursuits.
In the case of Jarmusch's hero, the pointedly named Don Johnston (Murray), that pursuit is women. Don, as Jarmusch makes painfully obvious, is an aging Don Juan figure, a single man quietly passing middle age whose entire life has been a string of doomed relationships with beautiful women. As the movie opens, Don's latest girlfriend is walking out on him, accusing him of treating her like a mistress, even though he's not married. She's a good 20 years younger than he is, and it's clear she's just the latest pretty young thing to be taken with him and then walk away. The same day, he gets an anonymous note telling him that he has a 19-year-old son, and that the son is on his way to seek Don out.
Don's neighbor, Winston (Jeffrey Wright, the most vibrant presence in the movie), a hard-working Ethiopian and amateur sleuth, decides Don must figure out who is the mother of his child, and so Don reluctantly sets out on a journey to visit four women with whom he had relationships two decades ago. Over the course of his voyage, it becomes clear how profoundly alone Don is, even when it's not clear whether his past loves have become any less lonely since they parted with him.
In his minimalist, laconic way, Jarmusch takes on the sadness of isolation that can come with apparent success: Don is a wealthy layabout who made money in computers but now just sits around his spacious house—and he seems able to pick up any woman he wants. The movie is full of beautiful women, from the old flames whom Don visits to random people he meets on his travels, but they are all ciphers, merely sketches of real people designed to fuel the angst of the lead character.
Despite its melancholic tone, Broken Flowers is as much a celebration of the male ego as any carefree sex romp. Don's journey is not about any of the women he's left behind, all of whom appear to have been abandoned on bad terms. It's about Don, and more specifically Murray, who's refined his deadpan performance from Rushmore, Lost in Translation and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou to such a level that at times he appears to barely exist.
In a way, Steve Carell, who stars as Andy, the 40-year-old virgin of Apatow's film, gives the kind of energetic, goofy performance Murray used to give before he became convinced that the only way for him to be taken seriously as an actor was to drain all emotion from his performances. Andy is the polar opposite of Don in many ways: He's approaching middle age without ever having known the touch of a woman, and while Don seems to attract women almost unconsciously, Andy repels them the same way.
The two also have plenty in common: Andy has sublimated his desires into his fetishistic toy and memorabilia collection, a way to fill the void in his life just as Don's flings filled his void. They both work in the cold, masculine field of technology: Don with his computer business and Andy at an electronics store. Like Don, Andy needs some encouragement to make an effort to cure his loneliness, and he gets it in the form of a trio of co-workers who make it their mission to get him laid. The first half of the movie is a typical Apatow comedy, with plenty of crude humor (taking full advantage of the R rating) and tons of laughs.
But the second half takes Andy into more conventional rom-com territory, as he starts a romance with Trish (Catherine Keener, who's refreshingly about the same age as Carell) and struggles to give up his own bachelor ways and figure out how to tell the divorced mom of three that he's never had sex. The two halves sometimes fit awkwardly together, and although nearly every scene is funny, the movie is overstuffed at almost two hours.
It's not giving anything crucial away to reveal that Andy ultimately finds love while Don does not, but each movie in its own way rejects the callow bachelor lifestyle that so much Hollywood product tends to glorify. Andy's collection of action figures and Don's collection of girlfriends are equally antithetical to happiness, it seems, although whether either of them truly understands why is a question that's never answered.