The Year's Best Poker Movie

You heard it here first—The 40 Year Old Virgin is this year's best poker movie.  In fact, it dominates any poker movie since Rounders.

Yeah, yeah, the movie is “supposed” to be focused on a 40 year-old’s quest to finally...hmm…flop the nuts.  But the crux of his quest formulated at the poker table. 

In fact, poker is the catalytic thrust for all events that transpire in this belly-buster laughfest.  If Wicked Chops Poker had pitched The 40 Year Old Virgin to major movie studios, we would've set it up by saying,  “The 40 Year Old Virgin is a pokeromedy about Andy Stitzer, a meek 40-year-old who has never had sex.  Andy is reluctantly invited to play in his co-workers’ poker game.  Over cards and beer, his co-workers discover that Andy is a virgin and decide to help him become not a virgin.  Hilarity ensues.”

While Wicked Chops Poker spent nearly two solid hours laughing at this epic poker flick, it also got us thinking about a few things…

Andy Stitzer, played brilliantly by Steve Carrel, was running over the co-worker poker game.  Andy admitted to these faux-rounders that he played online “every night.”  This singular moment will eventually prove that The 40 Year Old Virgin is not only the year’s best pokeromedy, but the most prescient film about poker…ever.  Why? Because Andy’s character serves as a warning to many an addicted online poker player: “If you spend a majority of your free time playing online poker, and your only true social interaction is rake raging someone in the chat feature after losing a hand, you too will become a 40-year-old virgin.”  Sure, he almost ends up losing it to Elizabeth Banks (right), then eventually does to Catherine Keener, but this is Hollywood, and that kind of suck out ain't in your cards.

There just aren’t enough good poker movies or television shows (Exhibits A, B, and C: Tilt, High Roller, and NBC’s National Heads-Up Poker Championship).  Hopefully, The 40 Year Old Virgin will breathe some new life into the “poker genre.”  In fact, two promising poker movies are coming out next year, Lucky You (starring Eric Bana and Drew Berrymore), and Nic Cage’s Amarillo Slim biopic (if you don’t know much about Slim, Aces & Kings has a great chapter on him…must read material). 

So if you have not yet seen The 40 Year Old Virgin, surrender your seat on Party Poker/Poker Stars/Full Tilt/Noble Poker/Bodog, go to moviefone.com, and buy tickets for the next show.  Because as we've learned through the years, poker movies like this just don’t come around often.