Review of I Love You, Man (2009) by Paul G — 03 Sep 2018

As far as craft is concerned, you are knocking on the wrong door..

I Love You, Man.

I Love You, Man is a plot driven comic feature about a guy whose journey to find a friend in order to claim "the best man" title for its upcoming wedding. There resides very little space or range for even the actors to explore their own characters let along the audience.

The chemistry doesn't communicate to the viewers where neither the writing nor the performance works in its favour. It is a different thing to stay subtle and mellow on expressing the agendas and different to just surf through the shallow emotions; the "buddy" thing isn't just convincing here.

Addition to that, the mature take on it, leaves the crisp out of it and the makers start losing the audience as it ages on screen. The writing may be mature, but isn't adaptive or gripping enough to keep the audience tangled in its quirky bubble.

Its side characters gets more and more obvious and doesn't grow beyond their one-dimensional persona. And as far as lead ones are concerned, their non-impressive way to connect by depicting various episode is pure corruption. It falls flatly on technical aspects like its almost non-existent background score, immature cinematography and daft editing.

Neither the theme or the tone of the feature is palpable to its camera work; it's a big mess. Segal's portrayal is of step-back nature where he never attempts to steal the show and unfortunately Rudd fails to make the best out of it.

Hamburg and Levin's script isn't sincere enough to breed the sincerity of its self-created world and neither does Hamburg's execution factors in to save it. Segal's smarter portrayal and few tiny notions that sweetens things are the only high points of the feature.

I Love You, Man is a response that the audience offers to the actors as a consolation prize for as far as the craft is concerned, you are knocking on the wrong door.