For starters, 40 Days and 40 Nights deserves props for its inaugural trailer - a teaser that showed none of the film but managed to let viewers know exactly what it was going to be about.  The film's deceptively simple premise (it's about a guy who gives up sex and all sexual-related contact for Lent) seemed like it had the potential to be a comedic goldmine, assuming the filmmakers were able to either keep the final product really short or somehow craft it beyond its one-joke foundation.

Half of my wishes came true, as 40 Days is essentially as meaty as a Saturday Night Live skit-turned-feature film but is also mercifully short and pretty well-paced.  The action takes place in San Francisco and begins with home videos showing the seemingly perfect relationship between Matt Sullivan (Josh Hartnett, Black Hawk Down) and his girlfriend Nicole (Vinessa Shaw, Corky Romano).  Egged on by what we assume is an aversion to Matt's obsessive fetish for videotaping every mundane activity in her life, Nicole dumps him.

Flash to six months later, where a still-grieving Matt regularly seeks advice from his seminary student brother (Adam Trese) because he just can't get back into the whole dating scene (there's even a scene where he "leaves one in the chamber" with an extremely hot and willing babe).  For some reason, Matt is plagued with visions of a big, black hole opening in his bedroom ceiling, which is supposed to signify something though is no doubt a frequent worry for anyone living in the earthquake capital of the United States.

To make matters worse, Matt finds out - through the Bagel Guy (Michael C. Maronna, Slackers), no less - that Nicole is engaged, which leads to him taking a vow of celibacy.  He convinces himself that no sexual activity (including self-gratification) for 40 days will somehow help him get over Nicole and make him a better man.  His roommate and coworker (Paulo Costanzo, Road Trip) scoffs at the notion, but Matt really thinks his half-baked idea will work...until, of course, Ms. Right walks into his life.

Erica (Shannyn Sossamon, A Knight's Tale) and Matt "meet-cute" at Laundromat, or perhaps it's "meet-mute," since he never actually speaks to her.  Love blossoms after a romantic bus trip (seriously), but Erica eventually learns about Matt's Big Secret via a website offering action on the odds of him following through with his no-nookie plan (it was started by a coworker, played by the always devious Glenn Fitzgerald).  One might think a girl would find the whole abstinence thing kind of endearing, but Erica gets pissed off, but then accepts it, and then gets pissed off again.  Then accepts it again.  Then gets pissed off again. Hey, cut her some slack – she is a woman, after all.

Before long, Matt is as sweaty and twitchy as a guy waiting for the methadone clinic to open, especially when enticed by a trio of impossibly attractive vixens that work with him (their names all rhyme with "andy").  Basically, 40 Days intermingles two popular genres – the Raunchy Teen Sex Romp and the Chick Flick – in an attempt to lure two different groups of potential viewers.  There are plenty of boner gags, but there's also the whole mushy love thing, which will make it easier for guys to talk their girlfriends into seeing a film that offers this many opportunities to see bare boobies.

40 Days' pitch must have sounded pretty decent on paper, but in execution, it's fraught with problems.  Numerous factors, like Matt's horny priest-to-be brother, horny parents (Barry Newman and Mary Gross) and horny boss (Griffin Dunne) are added both to up the shock factor and pad the running time. Nicole, for reasons never adequately explained, is transformed from a sweet girl to an evil bitch-on-wheels.  But 40 Days' biggest problem is that its two main characters are the most boring people in the film.  Now, I'm not saying Sossamon is vapid, or that Hartnett is no good unless he's battling the Somalis or the Japanese.  It's just that I would have been much happier with a film about any one of the film's peripheral characters, even if some of them aren't as easy on the eyes.

40 Days is the debut film from screenwriter Rob Perez, was nicely photographed by frequent Steven Soderbergh collaborator Elliot Davis, and was directed by Michael Lehmann.  While Lehmann has done some work on hip television shows (Homicide, West Wing, The Larry Sanders Show), his post-Heathers film resume has been pretty sketchy.  The Truth About Cats & Dogs was decent, but My Giant, Hudson Hawk and Meet the Applegates rank among some of the worst cinema produced in the '90s (there is a special place in my heart for Airheads, but let's never speak of it again).  This one lands somewhere in the Cats & Dogs neighborhood.  I am, however, downright shocked that marketing savants Miramax didn't open 40 Days on February 8, which would have both taken advantage of the lack of decent date films for Valentine's Day and better coincided with the onset of Lent.

1:32 -

for strong sexual content, nudity and language