Guy Problem: 'I Love You, Man' is at once funny, novel, awkward

Jason Segel (right) and Paul Rudd (left)
iloveyouman.com

There's a famine of comedies and an unsmiling seriousness that plague movie theatres this season. It is thus timely that “I Love You, Man”—a strange romantic comedy directed and co-written by John Hamburg—recently came out on DVD.

The strangeness of the new release runs deep, and I only refer to it as a romantic comedy insofar as it meets the criterion on a loose technicality. It begins where most rom-coms end: Benedict wins Beatrice and the two make nuptial plans.

Here comes the rub. The hero is without a friend (or friends altogether for that matter) who could stand as best man, and “I Love You, Man” is in essence about the curious pursuit of such a man. That’s right, the love interest is a man.

Our hero in question is called Peter (Paul Rudd), and the movie’s explanation for his lack of dude-pals is that he’s a “girlfriend-guy,” one who devotes his attention to the care of his love relationships, leaving none for relationships of other kinds.

But such is hearsay: as far as I can tell Peter has no dude friends because a lengthy debate can be had about whether he is more feminine and feline than his fiancée, Zooey (the lovely Rashida Leah). His idea of a nice night involves the movie “Chocolat,” wine, and a summer salad. He’s anything but at home in the company of other men, and yet is awfully at ease with interoffice girl-talk. 

To find his man, Peter goes on several “man-dates” (another one of the movie’s many neologisms). We are treated to a montage of these, of his trial and errors, mostly errors, but which are so funny it leaves you wanting more. The search ends with Sydney (Jason Segel), and the instant in which it happens can be described as love at first sight.

If “I Love You, Man” sounds exaggerated, it’s because, well, it is. After all, it’s a comedy. You’ll laugh off many of its serious conceits, including realty practices that probably only make sense to L.A. residents. Rudd and Segel are given too many one-liners that are beyond their natural wits. The world, moreover, with which we are presented is one in which men really are from Mars, women from Venus, and that there are different sets of laws that govern the relationships of both species.

Yet somewhere beneath the caricature lies half-developed truths that are enough to make the movie more sophisticated than your ordinary rom-com. In fact, it easily could have been a serious movie, like “Funny People,” but what would be the fun in that?

What really makes "I Love You, Man" work are its minor characters. They command the screen with so great a relish that, as a sum, they shrink the presence of Rudd and Segel. I wish that Peter’s father (J. K. Simmons) and gay brother (Andy Samberg), the coolest men of the bunch, had more screen time. Same goes for a deadpan Jon Favreau (as Barry), who plays a convincing “dick.” Then there’s Zooey's gal-pals, Lou Ferrigno (as himself or a big piece of lean meat), and Tevin (Rob Huebel), all of whom season the movie to make it something worth watching more than once.

“I Love You, Man” didn’t win any awards, let alone garner any serious nominations. But if I were to give it one, it would be for Best Fart Scene. And since there’s no farting around in theaters at the moment, this movie by comparison comes as fresh air.