Blogorium Review: I Love You, Man

The Cap'n will always be there to deliver, and I've got a "hot off the presses" review of I Love You, Man (as promised).

I also watched American Scary, a documentary about the TV "Horror Host", which I'll discuss at a later date. In the meantime, I suggest you rent it so we can discuss. It's good stuff.

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While attendance was not mandatory, I'm still disappointed in the turnout - or lack thereof - to see I Love You, Man at the Carousel this afternoon. Including the professor, six of us from a class of twenty five or more bothered showing up to see the movie. Personally, I've been wanting to see this since it came out. I waited patiently, assuming other class members would do the same but they couldn't be bothered to go see a comedy on a Thursday afternoon.

Their loss. As it would happen, I Love You, Man is not only an interesting inversion of the "romantic comedy" genre that does some interesting work regarding masculinity in its various guises, but it also happens to be pretty funny. In fact, I'd argue that it's funnier than Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Knocked Up, and possibly even Superbad. While not as crude as Role Models*, Paul Rudd fans have nothing to fear in seeing this movie. If you happen to have a girlfriend, you could even make it a date**.

I Love You, Man splits the difference between "safe for both sexes" and "holy shit dude can you believe what happened in Step Brothers?" Like I said before, the movie is essentially a romantic comedy with the exact same arc: Boy is Lonely / Meets girl / Everything is going great / Boy does something to screw things up / Boy and Girl realize they miss each other / Reunion. It even has the "date" montage reminiscent of the "Speed Dating" scene from The 40 Year Old Virgin or well, any romantic comedy***.

The catch is that the Boy (Paul Rudd) already met the Girl (Rashida Jones) and they're about to get married. The problem is that Rudd doesn't have any male friends, so he goes / is set up on a series of "Man Dates" to find a Best Man for the wedding. While you can totally see where this is going (including the "meet cute" scene between Rudd and Jason Segel), the testosterone switcheroo inverts the predictability and makes things more fun.

I Love You, Man is also helped by a great supporting cast. Don't let the trailers fool you, however: Andy Samberg isn't in the film nearly as much as you would expect from the ads. On the other hand, there are a lot of great smaller roles for J.K. Simmons, Jane Curtin, Jon Favreau, Thomas Ian Lennon, Rob Heubel, Jo Lo Truglio, Jaime Presley, and yes, Lou Ferrigno. Ferrigno actually figures into the film in a much larger way than you'd expect and is in many ways responsible for Rudd and Segel's characters meeting.

Also, keep your eyes peeled for a Matt Walsh (Upright Citizen's Brigade, Role Models) cameo on the golf course.

What I find interesting about the film, critically at least, is the way it moves between understandings of "manhood" within the film. I'd be hard pressed to say the movie is either homoerotic or homophobic although both figure into the narrative in different ways. The increased assumption by some characters that Rudd's "Man Dates" are tied to latent homosexual tendencies (coupled with a very suggestive "bonding" scene in front of a fountain) make it hard to tell what position the film is taking. On the other hand, no particular brand of "masculinity" is examined without some criticism: unlike Role Models, which is explicit in the ways it expresses "maturity", every character - including Ferrigno- has pros and cons in their behavior. It's interesting that Samberg's character - one of the two openly gay characters in the film - is actually the least stereotypical in his performance. Because I Love You, Man flips the script (so to speak) on genre conventions, the relationship between men and women is also less crystallized in the film than it is in say, Forgetting Sarah Marshall (a film that is overtly expressive of male wish fulfillment about relationships).

I'm running long here but the good news is that I Love You, Man is crowd pleasing enough for the "date" crowd but clever enough (and periodically dirty) enough to entertain the Rudd / Segel contingent, of which a number of you count yourselves among. Plus if for some reason you say, dislike Seth Rogen, it's a viable alternative to Observe and Report. I say definitely check it out.


* This is not to say the movie isn't lewd, it's just in strange ways. Frequently the topic of oral sex comes up, but rarely on men.
** Which you can't with Role Models. I promise you that "Beyonce pouring sugar on my dick" scene is a date killer.
** This, like Role Models, isn't actually an Apatow production, but it lives in the same universe. Of course, this branch of the universe is increasingly being populated by cast members of The State, and Upright Citizen's Brigade. Not that there's anything wrong with that.