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Hi, this is Dana Steven Slate's movie critic here with a Slate's spoiler special on This Is 40, the new Judd Apatow comedy. And joining me in the studio is Chris Wade, audio producer at Slate.

Hi, Dana. Hey, how you doing? Great. Glad to be back on the other side of the glass again. Yeah, what was the last big sci-fi franchise oh uh total recall oh that's right that was a

great conversation okay well this one was actually your idea to come in and talk about this is 40

I wouldn't have thought of having you in for the simple reason that you're 24 but then I thought

this could be really interesting a 24 year old guy and a woman in her 40s with a kid talking about

this movie that's all about middle age that seems to me pretty overtlyly like Apato's attempt to grow up as a filmmaker, right?

I mean, he's always making films about these young men who can't grow up.

That's kind of his wheelhouse, basically, right?

Is like the guy, the Jason Siegel type, right?

The manchild, if you will.

Right.

And so here he is making a movie essentially about himself, although he cast Paul Rudd as his proxy with his family as his family.

His wife, Leslie Mann, playing Debbie, the Paul Rudd character's wife, and his two daughters.

So for me, this was a completely failed experiment, I will say.

I went into it with a fair amount of hope.

I sort of knew that it would be shaggy and sprawling and that it's quite long. It's two and a half

hours long or so, two hours and 40 minutes maybe. Yeah, it's bordering on three hours long,

which seems to be the theme of this holiday season, that everybody wants us to have burning buns as we come out of their film screenings.

But I thought maybe it would justify that length.

Funny people, for example, before we get into the fact that you like this more than me, which still stuns me.

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