After a few years of dormancy, raunchy “R”-rated sex comedies made a big comeback in the summer of 2005. With a gross of $209 million, Wedding Crashers made the biggest splash as it turned into the year’s most notable unexpected hit. However, The 40-Year-Old Virgin also found a large audience. Its $108 million take didn’t make it a true blockbuster, but it still established the movie as a breakout success.

And a pretty well-deserved success at that, asVirgin provides a lot of good laughs. We meet nerdy Andy Stitzer (Steve Carell), an employee at an electronics store who lives a pretty solitary life and has never had sex. During an after-work card game with other guys from the store, he reveals that he’s still a virgin. Inevitably, this leads to some ribbing from his pals, but they decide to help him.

Thus these co-workers try to get Andy laid, even though they have issues of their own. David (Paul Rudd) still hasn’t gotten over his break-up with Amy (Mindy Kaling), a split that occurred two years earlier. Womanizing Jay (Romany Malco) regularly cheats on his girlfriend Jill (Erica Vittina Phillips), and Cal (Seth Rogen) is a major pot-head.

Nonetheless, they plunge Andy into the scene and try to teach him how to score. Of course, they all recommend different methods and do little more than complicate the situations. Matters intensify when Andy meets Trish (Catherine Keener) in his store. She clearly hits on him, but he’s too much of a wimp to do anything at first. Eventually they do go out, and much of the movie follows their relationship, with an emphasis on how Andy’s virginity impacts on them.

Here’s what not to expect from Virgin: a tight, well-told narrative. The Andy/Trish relationship acts as the movie’s overriding plot, but it goes off on many tangents. Granted, it takes a while to get going, as Andy’s attempts to meet women dominate the first act. Those elements stay unfocused and connect only in a loose manner. The movie often feels like a series of moderately related sketches.

That sense should dissipate when Andy starts to date Trish, but it doesn’t. Virgin still pursues its narrative in a jerky, awkward way that sometimes makes it feel tentative. The story doesn’t seem to know where it’s going, and that means it meanders at times.

The movie’s length definitely causes problems. This DVD offers an unrated cut of the film that lasts a whopping 17 minutes longer than the theatrical version. I never saw the movie on the big screen, but 116 minutes for a flick of this sort already feels long; this kind of movie usually clocks in around 95 minutes.

To add 17 minutes to an already excessive length seems like a recipe for disaster. With a running time of 133 minutes, Virgin enters territory usually reserved for dramas, the kind of efforts that need deep character development. Comedies tend to work best at shorter lengths; otherwise the gags start to run out of steam.

And that’s exactly the problem that befalls Virgin. It boasts a pretty thin premise anyway; the decision to stretch that well past the two-hour mark means that we find diminished returns as it progresses. Some of that is fine since the movie really should get more serious as it progresses. After all, it attempts to get more heavily into Andy’s relationship with Trish, so it front-loads most of its laughs in the first half.

Nonetheless, I still think the film wears out its welcome at 133 minutes. 116 minutes pushed the limits, but 133 minutes breaks them. I think the movie would work better with a tighter cut.

Despite that issue, I still came away from Virgin with a positive impression. It may get tedious after a while, but it includes more than its fair share of laughs, and those help us get through the slower moments.

The flick’s first hour or so is uniformly terrific. This is one of the most profane movies I’ve seen in some time, and I’m sure the unrated cut adds to the level of cursing. None of it seems gratuitous, though, and it brings real humor to matters. It revels in its crudeness to great effect.

The presence of a terrific cast sure helps. Carell has turned into 2005’s breakout star. After years on The Daily Show and supporting roles in flicks like Bruce Almighty, he gets the chance to take the lead, and he embraces it. Carell makes Andy likable and sympathetic but isn’t afraid to go over the top to get laughs. He bleeds for the movie – literally, when he went through an actual chest-waxing for the film’s most painful but funny sequence.

A terrific actor, Keener brings depth to Trish, and the guys who attempt to get Andy laid also add life to the movie. Rudd is almost a revelation, largely because my most recent experience with his work comes from his recurring role during the last two seasons of Friends. I hated his character there, but he makes David one of the flick’s more entertaining characters.

So despite a mix of flaws, The 40-Year-Old Virgin gets a thumb’s up simply because it’s awfully funny. The movie lags at times and needs to lose a good half an hour. Still, too long and hilarious beats the hell out of quick-paced and lame.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin appears in an aspect ratio of approximately 1.85:1 on this single-sided, double-layered DVD; the image has been enhanced for 16X9 televisions. While some of the movie looked quite good, many other moments seemed problematic.

Sharpness usually appeared acceptably accurate and detailed. At times, however, I found the image to come across as somewhat fuzzy and soft, with lesser definition seen in some of the wide shots. Nonetheless, most of the movie appeared clear and appropriately focused. Moiré effects and jagged edges presented no concerns, but I noticed some prominent edge enhancement at times. As for print flaws, I saw a few specks and marks, but nothing excessive. The movie also looked moderately grainy during some sequences.

Colors were fairly accurate, though they seemed to be a little murky at times. The film stock used didn’t resolve the hues terribly well, so while they generally appeared acceptably vivid and bright, they lacked tremendous tightness. Black levels were fairly deep and rich, but shadow detail was mediocre. Low-light shots offered decent delineation at best. Ultimately, this was a watchable but erratic transfer.

As for the film’s Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, it offered a functional effort and that was all. Of course, I didn’t expect a dazzling soundfield from this sort of comedy, and I got exactly what I anticipated. Surround usage stayed limited most of the time. A few shots that got us inside Andy’s head used the rears to decent effect, but otherwise the back speakers added reinforcement to the front and nothing else.

In those forward channels, the music provided good stereo separation and opened up the mix reasonably well. There wasn’t a whole lot of activity or movement, but they conveyed a decent sense of space and place. The track functioned appropriately for the story.

Audio quality appeared fine. Dialogue was consistently warm and natural, and speech displayed no concerns related to edginess or intelligibility. Effects were a minor component of the mix, and they seemed appropriately subdued and accurate; there wasn’t much to hear, but the various elements were clean and distinct. Music lacked much low-end much of the time. Bass wasn’t poor, but it seemed lackluster. Otherwise the music came across as acceptably distinctive. This was a standard “comedy mix” and became a decent reproduction of the material.

Moving to the extras, we open with an audio commentary from writer/director Judd Apatow and writer/actor Steve Carell, actor/co producer Seth Rogen, and actors Jane Lynch, Gerry Bednob, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Romany Malco, Shelley Malil and Jonah Hill. All of them sit together for this running, screen-specific discussion, though Hill arrives late.

With so many participants, I feared this track would become disorganized and incoherent. Happily, it always stays pretty focused. It touches on the origins of the project and influences for many scenes, research into subjects like speed dating, improvisation and the work of the actors, elements added to the unrated cut, and other aspects of the participants’ careers. Lots of joking occurs as well, and we even learn how the Bible teaches us ways to pick up chicks. This proves to be an informative and entertaining commentary that never turns messy or chaotic.

Six Deleted Scenes run a total of 12 minutes, 45 seconds. I didn’t think there’d be any cut footage left from a movie as long as Virgin, but I thought wrong! Here we get extensions to the drunk driving and prostitute scenes along with a fairly long “Rooftop Confessions” clip in which the guys chat about their experiences. There’s also a Karaoke bit and a couple short shots of David in the store. The Karaoke piece isn’t very interesting, the others are fairly good.

The next four components all offer additional cut footage. I assume they were placed separately from the “Deleted Scenes” because they’re improvs and they act as alternate versions of existing sequences. We get You Know How I Know You’re Gay? (five minutes, 31 second), Andy’s Fantasies (1:59), Cal and Paula (2:35), and Advice from Mooj (1:23). All are quite amusing, and “Fantasies” even tosses in additional nudity – whoopee!

Note that the deleted scenes and all the above except “Advice” come with optional commentary from Apatow and Rogen. They give us background about the clips and relate why they didn’t make the film. They continue to be entertaining and informative.

After this we get a three-minute and 31-second Waxing Doc. This gives us behind the scenes shots of the waxing sequence and begins and ends with comments from Carell. At the start, he thinks it won’t hurt; at the end, he realizes his error. Nothing substantial appears here, but it acts as a cute glimpse of the production.

A longer segment comes from the nine-minute and 18-second Date-a-Palooza. I don’t know why it gets placed on its own here, as it’s just a longer version of the scene that made it into the final flick. On its own, it’s quite amusing, especially when a character from earlier in the movie makes a return appearance.

For still more unused footage, we move to Line-O-Rama. The six-minute and 19-second compilation collects lots of alternate lines for scenes that made the flick. We get lots of funny stuff in this fast-paced piece.

An odd little comic clip, My Dinner With Stormy runs two minutes and eight seconds. It presents a meeting between Rogen and the porn actress in which she hits on him. It seems kind of pointless, but it’s short enough to be decent.

A Gag Reel lasts four minutes and 35 seconds. A little more cut footage and some alternate lines pop up, but mostly we get the standard goofs and giggles.

The disc opens with some ads. We get promos for American Pie Presents Band Camp and Undeclared.

One of the summer’s sleeper hits, The 40-Year-Old Virgin mostly deserves its success. The film drags at times, but it offers more than enough funniness to make it enjoyable. The DVD offers mediocre picture and audio with extras that features lots of cut footage and an interesting commentary. Virgin won’t qualify as one of the better DVDs on the market, but the movie’s too amusing to miss.