I Love You, Man: The New King of Bro-mance Comedies
Just describing this picture sounds like the beginning to an old-timey joke: “Two straight guys are riding on a Vespa…”
Rating: 9 out of 10
For years we’ve had movies showing female best friends whose relationships are rich, fulfilling and often surprisingly lacking in naked pillow fights, but nonetheless still satisfying. In the past few years though a trend has emerged, the “bro-mance” flick, a platonic romance genre where the two main characters are guys just trying to figure out how to express themselves inside the civil war-era social norms of daily society. Women have forever been not only allowed, but encouraged to wear their emotions on their sleeves, but men have been told since birth to “suck it up” or “act like a man”, which is somewhere defined as “stoic, rigid and bearing the emotional capacity of a petrified tree”. Now those walls are starting to break down and Hollywood is riding that wave of acceptance. Pineapple Express is another example of these male-bonding, Hallmark-shifting scenarios, but here on the “Vespa of manliness” this film powers through to say what it needs to say in a meaningful way while being distractingly funny.
I Love You, Man is the story of Peter Klaven (Paul Rudd) who is pleasantly happy with his life for good reason. He has a great job as a real estate agent, on the verge of working his first big celebrity house sale for Lou Ferrigno and he’s hoping to parlay that money into an even bigger commercial land deal, which would secure not only his future, but that of his brand new, nearly perfect fiance, Zooey (Rashida Jones). With wedding plans being put together, a small fissure in his perfect plateau begins to open when it is pointed out to him, by his own family, that he has no real male friends and therefore no one to be his Best Man. Peter is forced to jump into the incredibly awkward male “friend dating” scene and along the way he stumbles across Sydney Fife (Jason Segel), a man who is still living the man-child life Peter never got to experience. Social regression ensues as Peter finds out what it means to have a male best friend, but it comes with the downside of finding himself stuck between being a child with Sydney and being an adult with Zooey.
Balancing the tone of a film like this is a tricky situation. It has to be spitfire funny on a moment-by-moment basis, yet still follow the beat structure of a typical romantic comedy, completely ignoring the fact that your two main characters are both men. Once you block out that fact from your mind, I Love You, Man is a wholly traditional fit in the romantic comedy field and works brilliantly. John Hamburg directed this with a pure-hearted sensibility and really let the scenes develop naturally. He stayed far away from preset notions of what should happen to make the movie funnier and just let the script and the actors play with the reality of what would happen in situations like this. Case and point, if you have a person in his mid-30′s who owns a decked out garage which he calls “The Man Cave”, that person would without a doubt have a jack-off station out in clear view. No doubt about it. Sometimes people forget that comedy relies just as much on honesty in storytelling as drama, possibly even more. As the classic saying goes, “It’s funny ’cause it’s true.”
Yet, no matter how honest the script may be written, the performers have to deliver in a big way and Paul Rudd and Jason Segel did not disappoint. Right now you can’t find another actor like Paul Rudd. He is the king of the awkward everyman role and plays it with such tenacity and confidence that you have a hard time believing he isn’t exactly like that in real life. He also refuses to pull back from scenes other actors might approach in a more over-the-top comedy fashion. Rudd brings heart and class to even the most immature moments and that’s where his key to the kingdom lies. Accompanying Rudd on this yearning journey for friendship is Jason Segel, who plays the more outlandish and uncontrollable foil for Rudd’s straight arrow. Segel dives into his character unabashedly and manages to hold himself together even in the face of utter ridiculousness and embarrassment. He is quickly challenging the throne of Seth Rogen as the lovable schlub, which is made even more amusing by the fact both actors started together under the tutelage of R-rated comedy guru, Judd Apatow, back on the short lived TV show, Freaks and Geeks. Now more than ever, I’m convinced something was in the water back there on the craft service table that made everyone from that show incredibly talented and funny. (Wonder if they bottled any of it? Hmmm…)
Dancing in the wings of this two-man show is a whole slew of great actors. Jon Favreau and Jamie Pressly play a married couple that we all know too well, the ones who love to fight, love to make up and absolutely love each other in a fashion no one else understands. Rashida Jones, as Zooey, continues her stride towards epitomizing the perfect girlfriend, which she started when she appeared on The Office as Jim’s girlfriend, Karen. She’s witty, adorable and really shines in the deadpan comedy styles she’s chosen recently. I’m hoping it all continues well for her as she co-stars with Amy Poehler in the upcoming show, Parks and Recreation (made by the same producers of The Office). As many people have already said in other online reviews, the only downside you can scratch and claw to find is the painfully tiny amount of Andy Samberg, who plays Rudd’s gay younger brother, who is in turn much more masculine. Samberg is leading the new wave of young, out-of-the-box comedians and the more of him you include in your projects, the more successful you are bound to be. I also appreciated J.K. Simmons who seemingly walked right off the set of Juno, where he played her dad, and onto this one, where he plays the dad once again. I guess if you do something well, keep on truckin’.
Recommendation: The audience I saw this with was a packed house and I missed a good handful of lines of dialogue because people, including myself, were laughing too loud and too long. The combo of Rudd and Segel is just too good to miss. Even though the movie might seem immature at times, there is heart and honesty in there that I think many people, male and female, will relate to.
Tags: amy poehler, andy samberg, bromance, comedy, fiction, I Love You Man, jamie pressly, jason segel, joh hamburg, jon favreau, judd apatow, movies, parks and recreation, paul rudd, pineapple express, rashida jones, review, saturday night live, seth roegn, snl, writing
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