We get a spoof of the Judd Apatow oeuvre with 2010’s The 41-Year-Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It. Andy (Bryan Callen) may be in his forties, but he’s never gotten laid. He seeks to change that, and we see a progression of women with whom he attempts to develop relationships.

In the mean time, his teenage roommates Jonah (Steven Sims) and Michael (Steven Nicholas) seek booze to help them get with female classmates. A peer obtains a fake ID that names him “McAnalovin” (Austin Michael Scott). They go on various adventures as part of their quest for beer and chicks.

As the title implies, Virgin shoots all over the place in its desperate attempts at comedy. Of course, it focuses mostly on the various Apatow-umbrella flicks, and the movies referenced in the title do get the most attention. Virgin casts a broad net, though, so you’ll also find allusions to efforts as disparate as Dateline, There Will Be Blood, the Grand Theft Auto video games and Slumdog Millionaire.

This means a movie without much of a semblance of a plot. It starts as a mix of 40-Year-Old Virgin but eventually morphs into a mix of Knocked Up and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, with an emphasis on the latter. Though those flicks act as the framework, they create a loose story; inside of those basic tales, the film indulges in all those random references I mentioned earlier.

And that’s part of the reason that Virgin is a mess. It just grabs at any gag it can conjure, even though many of these make absolutely no sense. Why does the “Seth” character suddenly emulate Daniel Day-Lewis in There Must Be Blood? I have no clue, other than the notion that someone figured it’d be funny.

It’s not, though I do think Stephen Kramer Glickman’s performance as “Seth” becomes one of the movie’s stronger elements. He nails Seth Rogen’s voice/laugh, and he does a credible Day-Lewis as well. I can’t claim that Glickman’s work produces any laughs, but at least he shows talent.

Actually, most of the actors demonstrate decent skills, so I can’t fault them for the movie’s failings. Instead, it’s all about the script and the gags. Like virtually all of these sorts of spoof flicks, Virgin takes sequences from existing movies and makes them more extreme, usually via gross and/or violent jokes.

That’s not what I’d call a witty twist, as it just makes the gags utterly predictable. Maybe if you’ve not ever seen movies of this sort, then all the jizz/poop/vomit/whatever jokes will amuse you. If you’re over the age of 10, though, they become less effective.

Virgin has to go even more extreme than usual due to the nature of its source material. The Apatow movies already have their own share of body-function gags, so they become more difficult to spoof. Virgin doesn’t do this in a creative manner; it essentially just combines its random film/cultural references with extreme grossness and hopes we’ll laugh.

Maybe you will, but I didn’t. I’ll admit that Virgin was more entertaining than wholly awful peers like Date Movie and Epic Movie; at least this one showed the occasional glimmer of life. However, it doesn’t take much to be better than the Movie movies, so don’t expect much from this one. It may not be as terrible as its cohorts, but it still lacks any basic entertainment value.

The 41-Year-Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It 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. The transfer looked quite good.

Colors came across well, as the movie offered nicely delineated and bright hues. Blacks seemed dark and full, while shadows were reasonably smooth. Some interiors came across as a bit dense, but those instances weren’t problematic.

Sharpness seemed fine. A few slight examples of softness and jaggies cropped up through the film, but these were minor, and overall definition looked solid. I noticed no shimmering, and edge enhancement was minor. No source flaws marred the presentation. This became a very nice SD-DVD presentation.

I also thought the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack of Virgin was perfectly decent. Examine the audio of pretty much every other comedy of this sort and you’ll know what to expect from the soundfield. It was a front-heavy affair that usually didn’t offer much more than general ambience. Don’t expect action-movie material from this restrained mix.

No issues with audio quality occurred. Speech was consistently distinct and concise, and I detected no problems with edginess or intelligibility. Effects played a minor role and never taxed the system. They displayed decent accuracy, though. Music was a more prominent participant. The track boasted good life and definition to the various tunes, as those showed solid clarity and depth. This was an unexceptional soundtrack, but it was fine for this sort of film.

A small roster of featurettes fills out the set. The Making of The 41-Year-Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It goes for 13 minutes, 59 seconds and includes notes from writer/director Craig Moss, writer/executive producer Brad Kaaya, ECF judge John McCarthy, world champion kickboxer Jarett Perelmutter, and actors Bryan Callen, Mircea Monroe, Noureen DeWulf, Chris Spencer, Austin Michael Scott, Randall Park, and Stephen Kramer Glickman. The show looks at the film’s premise, cast and performances, Moss’s take on the material and cinematography, stunts, and music/choreography. The show tries a little too hard to be funny, but it offers some decent basics about the production.

For the disc’s longest piece, we go to the 20-minute, 50-second The Business of Gags. It features Scott, Moss, Monroe, Callen, assistant prop master John Calderon, prop master Jonathan Buchanan, production designer Russell M. Jaeger, 2nd unit DP/B-camera operator Rob Givens and actor Steven Sims. “Business” discusses props and their use in various sequences. This offers a pretty good behind the scenes view of the production.

For a look at one of the actors, we head to Being Jonah Hill. In the four-minute, 58-second clip, we hear from Moss, Kaaya, Scott, Sims, and Glickman. We learn how Sims got cast as “Jonah” and how looking just like Jonah Hill has affected Sims’ life. Make no mistake: Sims really does look an insane amount like Hill. This is a moderately interesting examination of the subject.

Bryan Callen: Internet Sex Deity goes for three minutes, 52 seconds and features Callen, Monroe, Moss, Kaaya, and DeWulf. They tell us how old MadTV clips of a Speedo-clad Callen continue to thrive on the Internet, and we hear some of his salacious fan mail. This has little to do with the movie, but it proves to be oddly amusing.

Finally, The Teaser: How They Got the Movie Made lasts five minutes, 17 seconds. It includes remarks from Moss and Kaaya. They tell us how they shot a trailer as a pitch for the movie, and then we see the teaser in question. That’s the most intriguing aspect of this piece; the teaser uses a few different actors – including one who looks/sounds much more like Steve Carell than Callen does – but it features many gags that made the final film.

Question made more perplexing by the teaser: why does the movie say “41-Year-Old Virgin” instead of “40-Year-Old Virgin”? The teaser calls the flick The 40-Year-Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It, so why did they change it to 41? I’d guess it’s something legal, but since they used the full titles of Knocked Up and Superbad, it makes little sense that they couldn’t also refer to 40-Year-Old Virgin. Nothing on the DVD explains the title change, so I remain confused.

A few ads open the DVD. We get clips for Hot Tub Time Machine, Bitch Slap and I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. No trailer for Virgin appears here.

As a parody, The 41-Year-Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It fares better than efforts like Epic Movie or Date Movie, but that’s the definition of “faint praise”. Virgin shows a glimmer of life due to some of its actors, but it relies too much on the usual slapstick and gross-out gags; those make it another unfunny romp through pop culture. The DVD boasts quite good visuals along with decent audio and a small set of supplements. If you love these sorts of parodies, go for it, but I found nothing amusing here.