This Is 40

This “sort-of sequel to Knocked Up” reminds us for better and worse how all Judd Apatow movies start to seem like sort-of sequels to each other. It is perhaps a consequence of siphoning so much material directly from life. This particular domestic farce, which also resembles a home movie, co-stars the filmmaker's actual daughters and his wife, Leslie Mann, along with Paul Rudd as his proxy, and involves a married couple coping episodically with the onset of mutual middle age. Extended success may have taken off the edge of desperate hilarity in Apatow's writing; more often than noticing how funny this movie is, you notice how long it is—more nudged than inspired. But maybe that's just a function of getting older. Co-stars include Albert Brooks, John Lithgow, Megan Fox, Jason Segel and Melissa McCarthy.