Unreal Movie Review: I Love You, Man

“Bromance,” as I’m forced to call it, has been something of a central theme in the great comedy hits of recent memory. It was at the forefront of Superbad and Pinneapple Express, and even snuck its way into Knocked Up, a movie that was supposed to be about anything but guy bonding.

But here we are, the topic is finally at its breaking point so they devoted an entire film to it with no pretense of subplot, and I’m just glad they didn’t actually call the thing “Bromance,” although I guess Brody Jenner already had a trademark on that one.

Peter (Paul Rudd) is getting married to Zooey (Rashida Jones), but all his life he’s never had any real guy friends. This becomes an issue once he realizes that his side of the wedding party will be completely empty. He enlists the help of his gay brother (Andy Samberg), his mom and online matchmaking services to try and find a male friend to be his best man.

After series of failed man-dates, Peter finds a bromate (a bro soulmate, keep up now) in the form of Sydney (Jason Segel), who always speaks his mind and forces Peter to get outside his straight laced self by yelling a lot and not cleaning up after his dog.

Bro-bonding.

Part of me thinks that the entire concept (guy needs to find bro love), was pitched to Jason Segel and Paul Rudd with the footnote that they could just improv the whole thing. There are very few times where Rudd and Segel’s interactions seem remotely scripted, and it’s almost impossible to imagine how anyone could write the “man-talk” that comes out of their mouths. This bro babble gets exhausting after awhile and you just want to shout at the screen, “No one talks like that!”

So yes, I Love You, Man is essentially Rudd and Segel improving for an hour and half, but if I’ve been saying that like it’s a bad thing, more often than not that’s not true. Both are very funny, talented actors, but it’s just that we’ve seen them both be better in other films. Rudd was more likable in Role Models and Knocked Up, while Segel was definitely less of a creep in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

I’ve been tempted to mention “Apatow exhaustion” this entire review, but to do so wouldn’t really be appropriate. Apatow actually had nothing to do with this movie, and it’s not fair to credit nearly every working comedic actor today to him. But the movie does feel like a cut and paste of his other film’s characters, with slightly less clever writing, and slightly more Rashida Jones (in a stunning big screen debut I must say).

I will say that I Love You, Man meets expectations, but those expectations weren’t set very high in the first place. It didn’t bowl me over out of the blue like Role Models did, but it’s an adequate display of comedy in a time where all funny movies released appear to be divided into “from the guys who brought you Knocked Up, Little Miss Sunshine or Scary Movie.”

Hey, it’s got to be better than Knowing right?

3 out of 5 Stars

I do, I do, I ****ing do.