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Steve Carell gets his chest waxed for real, screams "Kelly Clarkson!", and a whole era of comedy begins. Judd Apatow's 2005 directing debut turned a sweet-natured premise — a middle-aged guy who never quite got around to it — into the decade's comedy blueprint.
A one-night stand with immediate, life-rearranging consequences. Judd Apatow's follow-up to The 40-Year-Old Virgin crashed slacker comedy into romantic comedy and somehow made you believe both. Seth Rogen graduated from stoner sidekick to leading man in real time, opposite Katherine Heigl as the career-focused woman suddenly sharing a future with him.
A last-week-of-high-school panic attack disguised as a party movie. Two best friends on a doomed one-night quest to buy alcohol, and a fake ID bearing a single name — McLovin — that instantly became the decade's most famous prop. This was the R-rated teen comedy that felt like watching your own friends instead of a movie.