Saturday, August 1, 2009

While Watching "I Love You, Man"...


...I was delighted to see a Hollywood film that actually put some interest into friendship and wondered when did movies become so love-centered? (summed up beautifully when Jaime Pressly's character asks one of her friends "why does everything have to revolve around you?", to which she anwers "because I'm single!").
In this one the typical rom-com plot is tampered with when the guy (Rudd) already has the girl (Jones) but needs the friend to be his best man.
Enter Segel and all sorts of testosterone driven insanity and sensibility a la Judd Apatow.
The screenplay by director John Hamburg and Larry Levin pokes at both men and women and raises some fascinating ideas (the first half hour is laugh out loud funny!) but then the movie misses its aim and becomes so damn formulaic.
You know, just because you change the characters' genders doesn't mean you can get away with playing by the same rules plot wise (reason why I'm one of the only living people who seriously disliked "Brokeback Mountain").
Even if Segel and Rudd have awesome chemistry (unlike Rudd's with Jones...although that could've been on purpose) the last part of the film falls flat on its face declaring the only universal truth Hollywood has learned about men and women after a century of filmmaking: that we might indeed be from different planets.

3 comments:

RC said...

the why does everything revolve around you quote is wonderful!

glad you shared it.

Andrew K. said...

Yes indeed Paul Rudd and Rashida Jones had zero chemistry.

Matt Kilgore said...

both overrated and a missed opportunity... it just stopped being funny.