RSS
Home
Bromance is in the air
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Jon Favreau has a minor role in the new comedy I Love You, Man, playing Jamie Presley’s husband who isn’t exactly fond of Paul Rudd’s Peter (especially after he vomits in his face). Hopefully everyone remembers that it was Favreau who starred and directed the comedy that is still the gold standard of guy comedies that focus on their emotions with Swingers. In that movie there is a scene where the main character Mikey leaves a number of messages on a girl’s answering machine that he met the same night, essentially going through the whole relationship in the span of 5 minutes. It was truly cringe inducing, but since many people have been there, we understood and sympathized with the character. It makes for a good movie. There are many of those moments in I Love You, Man, including Peter’s inability to leave messages, or come up with sensible nicknames. It is those moments though that helps propel this Man to excellence.
Peter (Rudd) has just proposed to Zooey (Rashida Jones) and realizes that he doesn’t have a best friend to be a best man. He really doesn’t have any true friends outside of work and fencing, so he decides to start “man-dating” to maybe find a friend and help fill out the wedding party for his soon to be bride. She doesn’t ask him to do this, and this is one of many pluses to the story. While there are a few guy stereotypes to help show why Peter doesn’t connect to guys, nobody really falls into a “category.” Peter’s gay brother Randy (SNL’s Andy Samberg) for example, has no obvious peccadilloes to suggest that he is gay, and he does his best to help Peter find a friend. When Peter finally meets someone he likes in Sydney (Jason Segal, Forgetting Sarah Marshall), it turns out he may be a large boy who hasn’t completely grown up, which is common in comedies today. But even though there are things surrounding him that lean towards being a caricature, Segal and Larry Levin, who co-wrote the screenplay and is credited with the story, never let that get out of hand. If that happened and we truly questioned why Peter was hanging out with Sydney, then this wouldn’t work.
All credit to Rudd, who does carry this movie, even more so than Role Models, and does a fine job of being understated and loose from one moment to the next. His poor attempts at accents and air-guitar get funnier as the movie goes along, and you also can tell when some scenes are improvised.
One of the main positives of the new group of comedies, from 40-Year-Old-Virgin to Forgetting Sarah Marshall, is while the focus is on guys either trying to grow up or realizing that they haven’t yet, there really is a point to the story. Man covers a relationship that is out there, and while I am not exactly Rudd’s character, I related with quite a bit of the situation that he found himself in, which brings it back to identifying. When you watch a comedy like Step Brothers, although there are funny and outrageous moments, it can’t really vault into the upper echelon, as nobody thinks any of that is really possible. I Love You, Man doesn’t have that problem, as we feel everything that is going on as well as laughing somewhat insecurely at ourselves.
While Segal is solid, and Favreau and Jamie Presley steal their scenes, it is Rudd who shows that he can carry a movie on his own. You may not love Rudd yet, but you gotta love his movies.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
