In theaters

THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN, directed by Judd Apatow, written by Apatow and Steve Carell, 111 minutes, rated R.

The summer’s funniest, most affectionate and – as it happens – dirtiest comedy turns out to be “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” an outrageous movie from Judd Apatow that stars Steve Carell as Andy Stitzer, a doe-eyed neophyte in need of some serious manscaping who has gone a stretch longer than most when it comes to having sex.

The film’s opening shot proves that impotency is hardly the reason behind Andy’s virginity. When we first see him, he’s crossing the screen in a pair of boxer shorts that reveal – how to put this delicately? – a flower in full bloom.

And yet the way Stitzer carries himself belies such boxer short bravado. Shoulders rounded, face drawn, spirit wounded, he shuffles to the washroom in a haze. Outward appearances suggest that Andy could be the big man on campus, for sure, but everything else in his life suggests that somewhere along the way, he lost his way.

His life is consumed with collecting collectibles – the superhero type – as well as comic books, video games and posters of the rock band, Asia. He doesn’t own a car – hell, he doesn’t even know how to drive a car – and so he rides his bicycle to work, always wearing a helmet, always mindful of the traffic laws.

Andy is the good nerd – the pop-culture pick upon you come to love; his insecurities and neuroses are human and recognizable, which is the key reason the film works as well as it does.

His job at the electronics superstore Smart Tech is joyless dreck, every bit as unsatisfying as his life, but that’s soon to change. When his co-workers, David (Paul Rudd), Jay (Romany Malco) and Cal (Seth Rogen), invite him to a game of poker, they stumble upon the root of Andy’s angst.

He isn’t the serial murderer everyone has always assumed him to be. Instead, he’s just a shy, 40-year-old virgin humiliated by his situation. It’s a revelation that embarrasses poor Andy, but which gives these emotionally stunted yet well-meaning men reason to get organized. They want Andy to know what they believe – sex is good, sex is your friend – and so it’s full speed ahead to turn him into a new age Lothario.

The film, which Apatow co-wrote with Carell (“The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” NBC’s “The Office”), is a deceptive sleight of hand. It sounds as if it’s purely low-brow, which it certainly is in parts, but not in total. No comedy this consistently laugh-out-loud funny could only be the result of sex jokes – after 10 minutes, they’d lose their punch. The energy would evaporate. Boredom would settle in. Nobody would bother to light up.

Comedy is too difficult to craft, its elements too challenging to get right for its success to be a mere fluke. Purist film enthusiasts will scoff at the idea that a picture so good-naturedly raunchy could also be bright and smart, but “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” armed with an excellent cast that includes Catherine Keener as Andy’s willing love interest, proves them wrong. The movie is expertly conceived, acted and written.

Grade: A

On video and DVD

THE RING TWO, directed by Hideo Nakata, written by Ehren Kruger, 110 minutes, rated PG-13.

The water budget for “The Ring Two” must have set Hollywood on its can. In it, bathtubs overflow, ceilings drip, entire houses flood, walls weep, wells vomit, characters nearly drown, and yet – ironically – the movie suffers from the lows of a creative drought.

The film finds Naomi Watts back as Rachel Keller, a former Seattle-based journalist who nearly died in the first film when she viewed a video tape whose contents were so disturbing, they might have killed her within seven days had her sleuthing not put a stop to the clock.

Now living in Oregon with her creepy son Aidan (David Dorfman), Rachel finds herself in the unenviable position of once again having to deal with a copy of the video tape she thought she had destroyed.

Its contents aren’t exactly the stuff of Merchant Ivory. They involve a nightmare of Victorian severity, with humorless, middle-aged women tossing themselves off cliffs and a sketchy young girl with bad hair and worse teeth wreaking all sorts of havoc.

On second thought, maybe this is Merchant Ivory.

So, what gives here? If you’ve seen the first film and understood its endless haze of puzzles, which kept accumulating until the ideas that fueled them turned on themselves, you’ll know what gives – there are no revelations here, not even when Sissy Spacek slums through a kitschy cameo to help sort things out. And if you haven’t seen the first film? Well, expect a Rubik’s Cube without the payoff.

The film has its moments, such as in a scene in which several angry young bucks go berserk in a forest and a scrambling flight up and out of a slick well that’s well done. Watts also is good, far better than the material, with screen presence to spare in spite of the empty script she inhabits. Still, for her and for Hollywood, this is bland, underwhelming product.

If “The Ring Two” came with a ring tone, it would be a raspberry.

Grade: C-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays in Discovering, Fridays in Happening, Weekends in Television, and are archived at RottenTomatoes.com. He may be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.

THE VIDEO-DVD CORNER

Renting a video or a DVD? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores. Those in bold print are new to video stores this week.

Alexander – C

A Very Long Engagement – A

The Aviator – A

Beauty Shop – C-

Bride & Prejudice – B

The Brown Bunny – C

Coach Carter – B-

The Chorus – A-

Collateral – B+

Constantine – C-

Darkness – D+

Diary of a Mad Black Woman – C-

A Dirty Shame – B

Ella Enchanted – B

Flight Of The Phoenix – C-

Guess Who – C+

Hide and Seek – C

Hostage – C-

House of Flying Daggers – A

Ice Princess – B-

The Incredibles – A

In Good Company – B+

Kinsey – A

Kung Fu Hustle – A

Ladder 49 – B

A Lot Like Love – D

Man of the House – C-

Meet the Fockers – C

Million Dollar Baby – A

Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous – C+

Monster-in-Law – B-

Muppet Show: Season One – A

Napoleon Dynamite – B+

The Notebook – B+

Ocean’s Twelve – C-

The Pacifier – D+

Ray – A

The Ring Two – C-

Sahara – C-

The Sea Inside – A-

Sin City – A-

Upside of Anger – B