You are Judd Apatow. How quickly you have gone from being a comedy giant to a guy who pleads with Melissa McCarthy to help him out. ‘Come on, I need additional improvisation. This is testing badly.’ THIS IS 40 is a marketing error. For starters, you’re pretty much alienating the youth demographic, the kids who go out and buy movie tickets to have a good time. They don’t want to think about the downhill years, when lines turn to worries, when neuroses become annoying habits. ‘Man, I just wanna be Bill Murray. He parties in his sixties. I believe he is quite rude to people who ask him a question but, hey, he’s Dr Venkman – back off, he’s a party scientist!’ I don’t want to identify with Paul Rudd, known here Pete, a man who quit Sony to start up his own label and goes retro with acts that are, like, missing presumed session musicians.

Pete is a modern American hero. He has money problems. What does he do? He spends more! A hotel suite! Room service! $12,000 to fly ‘The Rumour’ in to support Graham Parker for a sparsely attended gig! Plus he gives his dad (Albert Brooks) an original John Lennon cartoon to sell to ease his money problems, prompted by three test tube off-spring who live with him under the flight path of LAX. (Clearly, Brooks’ character hopes petrol will be dumped into his back garden for compensation purposes.)

THIS IS 40 is about adults who do not deal with their own problems. For a whole two hours and thirty minutes. Apatow says that he gave us the extra twenty minutes for free. No, you kept me from the buffet at Sizzler’s for that length of time. What am I gonna do? No bread sticks.

Pete’s wife Debbie (Leslie Mann) is not any more likeable. She flirts with a hockey player from Philadelphia, lets him think she’s available, a party girl, all for her ego. You have to feel sorry for the guy, and not just because he is from Philadelphia. She too has money problems. Someone has stolen $12,000 from her clothes store. Her quiet employee (Charlene Yi, who at one point sounds like a possessed Chuckie doll – more improvisation) believes the culprit is Megan Fox, the store’s best employee, to whom customers flock to get dressed. (The film is set in LA, so we aren’t talking realism.) At one point, Debbie puts her hands on Megan Fox’s breasts, precisely because they are as iconic as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s sunglasses, Bruce Willis’ vest or Johnny Depp’s pirate outfit – only firmer to the touch. It is at this moment that the audience has a Eureka moment. We are supposed to identify with Leslie Mann. She goes where mere mortals can only dream off. But you know what? They’re just breasts.

So I don’t like Pete. I’m not a fan of Debbie. What’s going to keep me interested? Answer: the cute kids. The eldest has just turned thirteen. She’s addicted to LOST. The film is set in 2012. LOST has been off the air for three years. Do you remember where you were when you watched the last episode? I got up, saw the first few minutes, but then I had to go to work. BUMMER! What Apatow is doing is conspiring with J J Abrams to do some cross-promotional stuff. I write LOST into THIS IS 40. You plug me in SANCTUARY or whatever the name of his new series is. (You know the one where all the electricity goes off.) There is a line about cursing nerds, but you know he doesn’t mean it. Nerds are Apatow’s lifeblood: remember FREAKS AND GEEKS? No, Apatow is disingenuous.

Not only does Apatow plug LOST. He also gives prominence to Lance Armstrong’s LIVE STRONG charity with a cycling outfit worn by Pete. Whoops! Got that one wrong! Armstrong is a self-confessed doper, stripped of his seven Tour de France titles (I think) – don’t curse me, I’m doing without Google (which should be the new definition of going commando). Personally, I think Apatow should have erased any reference to LIVE STRONG. It’s amazing what you can do digitally these days, except if you are the makers of BEAUTIFUL CREATURES – the effects look tripe! But he doesn’t.

The best bits of THIS IS 40 are to do with parenting. Kids sassing back at mom and dad for limiting their electrical appliances. I didn’t entirely believe that, especially when Pete and Debbie tell their eldest daughter to go out and build a fort, or play with a stick and tyre. (We know they are not ‘for real’.) Still, when a kid defaces the eldest’s Facebook page, it’s time to take a stand. That’s where Melissa McCarthy comes in. She goes ballistic when Debbie picks on her son for labelling her daughter as ‘not hot’. Note to Debbie: the sexualisation of thirteen year olds is a bad thing. Ask Mr and Mrs Spears. This isn’t cyber-bullying – this is ‘let the kids get on with it and it’ll burn itself out’. Debbie’s behaviour is reprehensible. She makes a kid cry. Pete defends his wife, but then he prods McCarthy. The three end up in the head teacher’s room and Pete and Debbie lie some more. It’s a McCarthy witch hunt! We are supposed to forgive them? In this scene, everyone is at fault, but I felt Pete and Debbie were picking on the single parent. Default them! Take away their credit rating, the heartless so-and-so’s. This truly is the theatre of cruelty.

I did not like Pete’s dad, who plays the needy relative card and I did not like Debbie’s dad (John Lithgow) who plays the quietly fazed card. At least the latter child-minds without expectation of payment or love! He may be a rich spine surgeon, but he has values.

A cyclist on his bike in Act One crashes in Act Five. Pete blames the motorist who opened his door. The latter has the moral high ground until he hits Pete. Moral: don’t hit him, sue him. You’re right, don’t let the whiny 40 year old in a strop get to you.

Apatow has a thing about 40. First, THE FORTY YEAR-OLD VIRGIN and now THIS IS 40. What next, a remake of FORTY GUNS? I can just imagine an Apatow western. Jason Segel turns up as a too-tall gunfighter. ‘They keep hitting me in the head!’ ‘That’s because there is more of you to aim at.’ Chris O’Dowd plays the sheriff. ‘I don’t actually keep law and order. I share it out. It’s kind of an Irish Communist thing.’ It has got to be better than THIS IS 40, the Academy Awards bait that wasn’t. Still Iris Apatow (as the younger daughter) is the best thing in it. She’s eight years old. Blameless!