Review of I Love You, Man (2009) by Dustin L — 07 Aug 2011

I Love You, Man is a comedy starring Paul Rudd (Role Models, Knocked Up, The 40-Year Old Virgin) and Jason Segel (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Knocked Up, Dead Man On Campus). The film is produced by Ivan Reitman (Old School, Road Trip, Eurotrip).

The film is set around a man, Peter Klaven (Rudd), a real estate salesman who just got engaged to his girlfriend, Zooey Rice (Rashida Jones). Zooey is all excited and starts calling all of her friends and telling everyone all about what just happened. Peter realizes that he has nobody that he is really overly excited about telling the big news. One night, while Zooey was having a girls night, Peter overheard them talking about him and showing concern that he has no friends. So Peter seeks the advice of his gay brother Robbie (Andy Samburg) on how to find guys and go out on "man-dates." Peter hangs out with Barry (Jon Favreau) the husband of one of Zooey's friends on poker night. The laughs ensue during these next couple scenes but the night doesn't go over too well for Peter. His mom then sets him up on a "man-date" with a man named Doug who actually thinks this is a romantic date and the evidence is seen clearly at the close of the date. After all these horrible occasions Peter decides maybe it would be best for him to give up but then he meets Sydney Fife (Segel). Peter starts hanging out with Sydney all the time and actually starts missing out on normal date nights with his soon to be wife. But, will Sydney become the friend that Peter has always needed? Will he become Peter's best man? Well, you just have to watch the film to find out.

I have always felt and it's become more and more evident as of late that Paul Rudd is a very underrated actor. While I don't feel that his performance in this was quite as strong as his recent performances, it's still pretty good. As with most of his performances nothing that he does feels forced. Even the parts when the dude was just straight up awkward he pulled it off perfectly. I know it doesn't apply to his acting per say but this character seemed to be a little more annoying than his other characters. That blame doesn't fall solely on his shoulders though as it is the character in the film. Jason Segel is another highly underrated actor, with his breakout performance being his role in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. But in this film he was very funny and then towards the end he became the awkward acting one that Paul Rudd was at the beginning. He's come a long way since his role in Dead Man On Campus. As far as the supporting cast goes, they were all solid and did what they had to do to keep the overall rating of the film from falling off. Acting plays a major role for me in how much I like a film. If acting is bad it's really hard to like a film no matter how great the rest of it is. Typically comedies don't have the best acting outside the main roles but the people making this film did a great job of selecting the cast as a whole and not just picking two big stars to play the main roles.

The script was originally wrote by Larry Levin, when John Hamberg was offered the script he decided to re-write it so he could make it as real as it possibly could be. I don't know what the script was like before Hamberg re-wrote it or how much changing he had to do, but the script as a whole was great. I feel that it's definitely a situation that could really happen in today's society. He said that he thinks most people live in an R-rated world and he wanted the script to revolve around an R-rated world. Well, I think he got exactly what he wanted and I do think that most people live in an R-rated world. Hamberg did a great job of mixing serious moments with funny moments. The characters were put into real situations and he showed what I feel the average person would do when faced with those situations. John Hamberg hasn't done many films and this is the first one that I can truly say I enjoyed. But if this film is any evidence has to what he can do with a film or how much he has grown since the other films he has done, I look forward to seeing more out of him.

Overall, I would say that my expectations for the film were met. While the film wasn't quite as funny as I was thinking it was going to be, it still had a good flow of comedy in the film. Paul Rudd is one of my favorite comedic actors and is continuing that growth. If people don't realize the talent he has by now I'm starting to think he never will. Some of the best actors go their whole career highly underrated though. The rest of the cast was great, the story was great. I think a lot of people will enjoy this film as a whole. Probably won't be as funny as you expected but will be a better movie than you expect it to be too. It has other things that help to overlook the fact that it's not quite as funny. A highly recommended film, one of the best comedies of 2009, still not quite as good as The Hangover though, a film that I was laughing non-stop during.