Comedy, culture and the splintered American family

Kung Fu Monkey: America at 24fps:

"The challenge is: Explain America to someone from somewhere else by giving them 10 movies to watch.

...Special Bonus Pick:The Forty Year Old Virgin (2005): Wow. Okay, I know: what the fuck is this doing here in Nashville's spot? Well, first off, I wanted another comedy -- what a culture laughs at is as revealing about it, more revealing about it than almost anything else. Second, unlike Annie Hall, this movie doesn't require a specific combination of cultural types, intellectual attitudes and geography to work. Annie Hall not in New York isn't Annie Hall; the mall in Virgin exists in every mid-size and up city in America. Virgin hits on male friendship in a way that's almost never been done; our peculiarly American obsession with/fear of sex; the bizarre political/cultural combo of the last generation that's allowed for an extended adolescence; but at the same time doesn't laud the moral superiority of 'growing up'. The ways Virgin deals with families is also fascinating -- every type of fractured American family is on screen, not to mention that Andy's friends essentially become the brothers he never had. Friends as replacement/support for the oddly reconfiguring, geographically splintered American nuclear family is something worth understanding."