I Love You, Man (2009)

Every year, plenty of movies are made about relationships. These include chick flicks with no grasp on reality, hard-hitting Oscar-bait dramas and indie-flicks that nobody sees. Every now and again, someone manages to make a comedy containing poignant commentary on modern relationships. Incredibly vulgar but oddly endearing, I Love You, Man strives to be one of these rarities.

Real estate agent Peter Klaven (Paul Rudd) is newly engaged to the beautiful Zooey (Rashida Jones). There’s just one problem- Peter doesn’t have any strong male friends and no one in mind to be his best man for the wedding. Peter struggles through a few awkward ‘man dates’ but strikes gold when a quirky investor named Sydney (Jason Segel) shows up at one of his open houses. Sydney’s ‘tell it like it is’ attitude is both amusing and enlightening and Peter begins regularly hanging out with him.

Zooey is happy for Peter until he starts spending a little too much time with Sydney in his ‘man cave.’ After Sydney’s veiled attempt to convince Zooey that she need to perform fellatio on her man during an engagement party speech, Zooey’s opinion of the man sours. Several incidents later, Peter cuts ties with Sydney, fearing that their friendship is hurting his relationship with Zooey. Naturally, everyone comes to their senses and we get an amusingly awkward but happy ending.

Despite a seeming paint-by-numbers plot, I Love You, Man is different. In some ways, it’s a chick flick for guys (or maybe just a chick flick with guys in the lead instead of girls) with loads of foul language and boyish humor. It can’t quite break away from its formulaic feel but it is a very unique role reversal. Crassness aside, it does offer a candid look at male friendship. Men are stereotyped to have all kinds of ‘guy friends’ that they go do ‘guy stuff’ with. It’s nice to see a film debunk that myth.

While the script makes a few genuinely interesting remarks about male friendship and relationships in general, none of the commentary is very memorable. This means that I Love You, Man is not the second coming of When Harry Met Sally. Some fans of emotionally honest comedies may be disappointed by this but I doubt it was the filmmakers plan in the first place. It seems like this film was designed as a blend of When Harry Met Sally and The 40 Year Old Virgin.

Does this mean that the meat of the film is dumbed down with potty humor to attract male viewers? Perhaps. Then again, the non-raunchy components wouldn’t have made for a very satisfying film on their own and would have seemed like an uninspired attempt to modernize When Harry Met Sally. By taking the path that it did, the filmmakers succeeded in making a film worth seeing once and that can’t be a bad thing.

Perhaps the film is held back by its cast. There are no leading actors or actresses in this production. It’s tough to sell a movie composed of people best suited or at least most known for their supporting role work. Paul Rudd works as an average guy and Jason Segel works as Sydney but they fail to make their characters dynamic in any way. Sure, they hit their marks and drop their lines when they need to but there’s some misfiring when it comes to their comedic chemistry.

I Love You, Man is good for a few innocent and several not-so-innocent laughs. You will be able to remember the basic gist of the film but few if any scenes, lines or characters will stick with you for very long. You can see better but you can definitely see a lot worse than this.

RATING: 3 out of 5