"What I learned from this movie, 40 Days and 40 Nights: Absitenence can be a very good thing. Especially from box offices where this film is playing"

Joel Siegel’s remark about *40 Days and 40 Nights* cleverly fuses humor with film critique. By drawing on the film’s core premise, abstinence, he delivers a punchy double entendre. The character in the movie pledges forty days without sexual contact as a personal challenge, and this plot device frames the moral and comedic dilemmas of the story. Siegel, instead of earnestly digesting the film’s lessons about self-restraint, redirects the notion of abstinence away from sex and applies it to ticket-buying itself, suggesting that the audience would benefit from abstaining from seeing the movie altogether.

The tongue-in-cheek comment implies that watching this movie is, in itself, an indulgence best avoided. Siegel uses understatement to express his disappointment: calling abstinence “a very good thing,” he doesn’t refer to personal morality or enlightenment, but to the act of not supporting what he considers a mediocre or poor cinematic offering. Absence, he suggests, becomes an act of discernment and even self-preservation when it comes to entertainment choices. This shift from the expected interpretation of abstinence signals his wit but also his critical stance.

By referencing the box office, Siegel plays with the dual meanings of “abstinence”, subverting the moral lesson at the film’s heart and transforming it into a satirical critique. For Siegel, exercising willpower isn’t about resisting carnal temptation; it’s about resisting cultural consumption that lacks substance. The implication is that the movie is not just unimportant, but actively worth missing.

Ultimately, Siegel’s review points out that sometimes, audiences benefit from being selective, implying both a critique of the film industry’s output and a wry suggestion to viewers: your time and money are valuable, and perhaps better spent elsewhere than on frivolous films like *40 Days and 40 Nights*. The statement as a whole is a succinct and comic dismissal wrapped in the language of the movie it critiques.