I Love You Man

Review: I Love You Man

Dir. John Hamburg

Cert. 15

105 mins

2009

Is Paul Rudd assembling a how-to manual for the modern man? Just a few months after showing us how to be a dad in the inoffensively silly Role Models, Anchorman’s Brian Fantana is now learning to be a Real Man™ in I Love You Man.

Peter (Rudd) is getting married, but his fiancee is shocked to realise that despite being well into his thirties, Peter has no male friends to serve as his best man. He's loved by women for being such a damned nice guy, but he's as clueless about other guys as a teenage boy is about women. Peter embarks on an absurd mission to pick up guys on so-called ‘man-dates’, and after a few lousy experiences (including the obligatory mistaken gay encounter), he bumps into Sidney (played with filthy charm by Jason Segel). Whereas Peter is sensitive, well-mannered and frankly more than a little tiresome, Sidney is a roaring, big-faced bon viveur, who lives in a gleeful state of arrested development and gradually teaches Peter to rock, drink, and do the revolting things that (apparently) make men ‘men’.

As a thoroughly juvenile, Apatow-esque comedy I Love You Man does an impressive job (boasting a supporting cast that includes Jon Favreau and the always excellent J.K. Simmons), although it's a little too reliant on the humour of embarrassment. The film plays on the totally unwritten code of straight male interactions that we're expected to pick up as kids - Peter just hasn't. He sucks at banter, repartee, and the language that men frequently speak to their buddies (the word "repartee" for example is a big no-no). Rudd, finally given the leading role that he's deserved for far too long, does such a convincing job as this hopeless fluffer of lines that you might wind up squirming in your seat at the clunkers the poor guy blurts out. As Sidney, Segel manages to charm and disgust simultaneously, and to be honest it's a little difficult to understand what this sexually confident, uninhibited beach bum sees in Rudd's awkward estate agent. Still, the two have good onscreen chemistry, Rudd's slight frame and delicate features a funny contrast to Segel, who bears an uncanny resemblance to a young Gerard Dépardieu.

Speaking of real estate, the film's ace in the hole is a weird surprise appearance by Lou Ferrigno, aka the Hulk, as himself. Yes, Peter is somehow Ferrigno's estate agent. I Love You Man is a film about men learning to be with other men. What better way to man up and join the global fraternity of testosterone than to sell the Incredible Hulk's house?

I Love You Man raises a ton of laughs, and the thin plot is carried almost entirely by the strength of the central performances. I'm not entirely sold on the idea that the only 'real' man is a caveman, but if I had to spend an evening with either Peter or Sidney, I would choose the troglodyte every time.

7/10

-James