40 Days and 40 Nights
A romantic comedy built on a very 2002 premise: a heartbroken San Francisco web designer swears off all sexual contact for the 40 days of Lent — right as he meets the perfect woman. Josh Hartnett at the peak of his heartthrob moment, opposite Shannyn Sossamon.
Released March 1, 2002 and directed by Michael Lehmann, 40 Days and 40 Nights stars Josh Hartnett as Matt Sullivan, a young San Francisco web designer who, reeling from a breakup, vows to abstain from any sexual contact for the entirety of Lent — and then meets Erica (Shannyn Sossamon), the woman who makes the vow nearly impossible to keep. It landed at the height of Hartnett's leading-man run, the same year Sossamon appeared in The Rules of Attraction.
The R-rated studio sex comedy was very much a product of its era, and reviews were harsh — 40% on Rotten Tomatoes, with a consensus calling it "smutty, sexist, and puerile." Still, it found an audience: made for about $17 million, it grossed roughly $95.1 million worldwide, with most of that ($57.2 million) coming from overseas.
More than for its reviews, it's remembered as a snapshot of the moment — Hartnett as one of the era's biggest young stars, dot-com-era San Francisco as the backdrop, and a high-concept "guy gives up sex" hook that kept it in heavy cable rotation for years.
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