It’s Friday night and I am single. Both of my roommates, one male (my best friend), and one female, have to work in the morning and are refusing the mighty sword of peer pressure to drink. My other good friend is about to be a baby daddy, which has changed his social drinking habits considerably. Sometimes I wish that I knew how to push through the wall of embarrassment and drink alone, but I can’t. I have too much self-respect. Though, I hear Elijah has no self-respect and consequently, no problem drinking alone.
(Editor’s note: This is true; no problem, but I prefer to think of it as being self-assured.)
I need a new wingman, a drinking buddy, someone to shoot the sh*t with, to check out and hit on women with reckless abandon, a friend. This is a massive dilemma for any straight man: How to find and audition a new friend without coming across as gay. My solution was to ditch the idea of drinks at the door, skip the concessions and find out how Peter Klaven, the main character in "I Love You Man," found his best man.
To be honest, I was a little skeptical when I first started entertaining the notion of meeting up with Peter and "I Love You Man." The cast of characters that he rolled with were primarily part of Judd Apatow’s crew, whom I have a deep comedic respect for, but his name was no where to be found. Comedy is a strange beast. Either you have the ability to write it or you don’t. Before I dropped my $10.50 for a first-runner, I needed to know what kind of relationship I was getting myself into. Three or four clicks later, I was staring at John Hamburg’s IMDB page. I knew at that moment that for this night and the next two hours, I was going to be in good hands. Back in 2001, Hamburg had written one of my favorite movies of all time. Based on my previous posts, you will never guess, so, I’ll just tell you. It was "Zoolander." I’ve watched it at least a half dozen times. It’s one of those once-a-year flicks that won’t get old.
Peter Klaven, embodied by Paul Rudd, is a real-estate developer in L.A. who has just proposed to his girlfriend Zooey, played by Rashida Jones. Zooey has a wide circle of friends (including Jaime Pressly and Sarah Burns) who she hangs out with and over-shares relationship details on a regular basis. Peter has a circle of none. After overhearing a conversation between Zooey and her friends about how men with few friends can become clingy, Peter embarks on a journey to find a best friend. He enlists the help of his younger, gay brother Robbie, played by SNL’s Andy Sandberg, to set up man-dates with straight men. After going through a series of comedic failures, Pistol-Pete stumbles upon Sydney Fife, played by Apatow stalwart Jason Segel, at an open-house for Lou Ferrigno. The two have an instant chemistry and the rest of the movie becomes a delightful balancing act between maintaining his relationship with his fiancée and building a man bond with Syd.
While Apatow and Hamburg both write in the same vein of comedy, Apatow’s aorta is intelligent d*ck-and-fart jokes and Hamburg’s is quirky character work. Peter is well written and well acted. Rudd is in his zone playing the challenged lover and Segel is solid. I felt that Sydney, as a character, had a lot more to offer than what was given in the editing room or from a directorial standpoint. He had a lot of baggage that was only hinted at during the film. Yet, this is a light-hearted comedy and Syd’s darkness would not have had the mass appeal. I am just a sadist and like the deep end of the pool.
Outside of Rudd, Segel and Jones, all of the characters in this film were well written character archetypes; nothing serious, just funny interludes to move the plot along and add depth to the film. There were one or two of Peter’s man-dates that I thought were caricatures but they didn’t bother me.
When you have a good script and good actors, your job as a director is to not f*ck it up by pulling it with a heavy hand. It doesn’t need to be stylized. It doesn’t need to be overly dramatic. It doesn’t need anything accept to flow its natural course. As the writer and director, Hamburg knew what he had and checked all of those boxes, nurtured what was already there and brought to life a very entertaining film.
The heart of this movie is in Peter’s journey. Awkwardness around new people, love and relationships and the desire to be successful are universal themes that one can easily relate to. The real genius behind good comedy is the ability to write outlandish characters and ground them in real human emotion. "I Love You Man" was a resounding success in my mind. I am actually surprised that this movie hasn’t had more pre-open promotion. I am guessing that the studio thought that the list of stars gracing the silver-screen would be able to attract the masses in short order. I was at a 10:20pm showing and the theater was packed. I guess that means they succeeded too.
My rating for this movie is 4 man-dates out of 5 man-dates. It was no "Zoolander," but it was right on par with "Knocked Up," "Super Bad," "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and "40-year Old Virgin." It was worth every bit of the $10.50 for the ticket and the $3.50 for the Reece’s Pieces. So I lied earlier about the concessions. So what? But, I still didn’t find a new friend. In the words of Fred Rogers, “Won’t you be mine?”
Jake
(Editor’s note: This is true; no problem, but I prefer to think of it as being self-assured.)
I need a new wingman, a drinking buddy, someone to shoot the sh*t with, to check out and hit on women with reckless abandon, a friend. This is a massive dilemma for any straight man: How to find and audition a new friend without coming across as gay. My solution was to ditch the idea of drinks at the door, skip the concessions and find out how Peter Klaven, the main character in "I Love You Man," found his best man.
To be honest, I was a little skeptical when I first started entertaining the notion of meeting up with Peter and "I Love You Man." The cast of characters that he rolled with were primarily part of Judd Apatow’s crew, whom I have a deep comedic respect for, but his name was no where to be found. Comedy is a strange beast. Either you have the ability to write it or you don’t. Before I dropped my $10.50 for a first-runner, I needed to know what kind of relationship I was getting myself into. Three or four clicks later, I was staring at John Hamburg’s IMDB page. I knew at that moment that for this night and the next two hours, I was going to be in good hands. Back in 2001, Hamburg had written one of my favorite movies of all time. Based on my previous posts, you will never guess, so, I’ll just tell you. It was "Zoolander." I’ve watched it at least a half dozen times. It’s one of those once-a-year flicks that won’t get old.
Peter Klaven, embodied by Paul Rudd, is a real-estate developer in L.A. who has just proposed to his girlfriend Zooey, played by Rashida Jones. Zooey has a wide circle of friends (including Jaime Pressly and Sarah Burns) who she hangs out with and over-shares relationship details on a regular basis. Peter has a circle of none. After overhearing a conversation between Zooey and her friends about how men with few friends can become clingy, Peter embarks on a journey to find a best friend. He enlists the help of his younger, gay brother Robbie, played by SNL’s Andy Sandberg, to set up man-dates with straight men. After going through a series of comedic failures, Pistol-Pete stumbles upon Sydney Fife, played by Apatow stalwart Jason Segel, at an open-house for Lou Ferrigno. The two have an instant chemistry and the rest of the movie becomes a delightful balancing act between maintaining his relationship with his fiancée and building a man bond with Syd.
While Apatow and Hamburg both write in the same vein of comedy, Apatow’s aorta is intelligent d*ck-and-fart jokes and Hamburg’s is quirky character work. Peter is well written and well acted. Rudd is in his zone playing the challenged lover and Segel is solid. I felt that Sydney, as a character, had a lot more to offer than what was given in the editing room or from a directorial standpoint. He had a lot of baggage that was only hinted at during the film. Yet, this is a light-hearted comedy and Syd’s darkness would not have had the mass appeal. I am just a sadist and like the deep end of the pool.
Outside of Rudd, Segel and Jones, all of the characters in this film were well written character archetypes; nothing serious, just funny interludes to move the plot along and add depth to the film. There were one or two of Peter’s man-dates that I thought were caricatures but they didn’t bother me.
When you have a good script and good actors, your job as a director is to not f*ck it up by pulling it with a heavy hand. It doesn’t need to be stylized. It doesn’t need to be overly dramatic. It doesn’t need anything accept to flow its natural course. As the writer and director, Hamburg knew what he had and checked all of those boxes, nurtured what was already there and brought to life a very entertaining film.
The heart of this movie is in Peter’s journey. Awkwardness around new people, love and relationships and the desire to be successful are universal themes that one can easily relate to. The real genius behind good comedy is the ability to write outlandish characters and ground them in real human emotion. "I Love You Man" was a resounding success in my mind. I am actually surprised that this movie hasn’t had more pre-open promotion. I am guessing that the studio thought that the list of stars gracing the silver-screen would be able to attract the masses in short order. I was at a 10:20pm showing and the theater was packed. I guess that means they succeeded too.
My rating for this movie is 4 man-dates out of 5 man-dates. It was no "Zoolander," but it was right on par with "Knocked Up," "Super Bad," "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and "40-year Old Virgin." It was worth every bit of the $10.50 for the ticket and the $3.50 for the Reece’s Pieces. So I lied earlier about the concessions. So what? But, I still didn’t find a new friend. In the words of Fred Rogers, “Won’t you be mine?”
Jake
