Saturday, March 21, 2009

Movie Review: I Love You, Man

Rated: R


Website: I Love You, Man official site


Starring: Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, Rashida Jones


My Review: Jason Segel makes me laugh. Jason Segel yelling really makes me laugh. Jason Segel yelling about things that don’t need to be yelled about cracks me up. I’m not entirely sure why, since unnecessary yelling usually annoys me to no end, but I challenge you to watch his rant about how he loves New Jersey from How I Met Your Mother and tell me it isn’t funny.


That being said, the periodic Segel freak-outs in I Love You, Man are amusing, but not quite enough to carry the entire movie. The movie is entertaining, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not as consistently funny as you would expect a movie starring Segel and the always affable, yet off-center, Paul Rudd to be. Rudd is newly engaged to Rashida Jones, and as they start making wedding plans, he realizes he has no real guy friends to stand by him at the altar. So he goes on a quest to find a best friend, which leads to a new spin on the “bad date montage” so popular in chick flicks. After wooing a series of freaks and those who were presumed to be heterosexual, he finally meets Segel’s character, a bluntly honest guy’s guy who dresses weird and loves the band Rush. The two instantly click, sparking a “bromance” (god I hate that word) that starts to get in the way of Rudd’s relationship with his supporting, yet perturbed fiancé.


The movie is at its best when it plays up the character quirks it invented for Rudd and Segel, specifically Rudd’s never-ending stream of bizarrely awkward sign-off phrases and Segel’s man-child way of never filtering what comes out of his mouth. But the movie has an uneven feel, where one moment the jokes are flying fast and furious and you know you missed something due to laughing so hard, then the next moment you’re stuck with scenes involving Jones’ character’s annoying friends, and you wish the entire movie was just Rudd and Segel riffing off each other.


Bottom Line: Though not as consistently funny as Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Knocked Up, or The 40-Year Old Virgin, if you’re a fan of those movies or that Judd Apatow style of humor, I Love You, Man may be worth a trip to theater. If not, it’s definitely still a good one to check out when available on DVD if only for the scenes that Rudd and Segel share.






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