My Review of "40 Days and 40 Nights"

40 Days and 40 Nights is a movie that I don't think I have ever had the urge to watch but we're in a bit of a crunch to kill time lately. It was something that showed up on Netflix and I needed something mindless to kill some time.

This movie came out back in 2002 and it definitely shows. It was such a blast from the past. Feelings of nostalgia overwhelmed me while watching this movie.

The main character Matt, played by Josh Hartnett is trying to get over this girl that he split up with 6 months ago. He's playing the field and having sex with tons of women every week. Unfortunately for him sex isn't feeling satisfying as he thought it would. His mind goes into some sort of crisis mode when he sleeps with these women.

He's trying to get help and asks his brother John, played Adam Trese, to help him out. His brother is practicing to become a priest. His brother tells him that his life isn't so bad and that he should be able to just get over it. It just so happens to be the religious period of Lent.

For those that are unaware of Lent, like me, it's a 40 day period in which people will sacrifice and withdraw from something that they enjoy to replicate the sacrifice of Jesus Christ's sacrifice when he was in a desert for 40 days.

Matt gets the idea of refraining himself from doing anything related to sex for Lent. Kind of a good idea in his case because he needed to get over his ex and I guess it could make him rethink what's important in his life.

This goes pretty good for him in the beginning because he's discovered that he's a lot more productive when he stops thinking about sex. His friends catch wind about his vow of celibacy and things go crazy from there.

I would say that this movie is a blast from the past because it truly is. It's a time when the Internet was a brand new thing. People were still calling each other with telephones and reading newspapers. The banter between people was not politically correct at all. In fact, a lot of the things that happen in this movie would never see the light of day in movies today.

It's a product of its time but it made me try to remember how me and my friends interacted back in the day. Did we talk the way that Matt and his friends talked? I think in a way it's an extreme version of the way that we talked. It sort of resembles American Pie but the thing is American Pie was a group of teenagers. It's kind of accepted that teenagers will talk a certain way. In this movie we're talking about people with budding careers. Some of that banter was pretty messed up if you compare it to today's standards.

It also painted a picture of how males are supposed to act around women. In this movie it explained that men are supposed to be aggressive and think about sex 24/7. Apparently in this movie, women aren't sexual beings unless men aren't trying to have sex with them.

There is a bit of homophobia in this movie as well. I kind of expected it seeing as this movie came out in 2002. There is even an issue of rape in this movie that isn't really addressed as rape.

Seeing this movie was an eye opener. We've come a long way to identify issues in society. I lived through this time and recognized many true things that had happened back in the day. Having seen them today I recognize that there were probably a ton of bad messages in a lot of movies back in the day that I don't even remember.

Overall, this movie was entertaining to me in a different way than you think. It was interesting for me to see all the nostalgic things that happened back in the day. I was disappointed to see how bad we were in the past but this movie did bring back memories. The crazy thing about watching this movie is that it felt like this movie came out yesterday for me. I have to give this movie a 6.5 out of 10. It's not a great movie but I would tell some peers my age to watch it again to get a taste of nostagia.