By Greg Oguss
There’s something hokey and vaguely off-putting about the average Vision Quest movie. Guy (or gal) suffering from an identity crisis embarks a 90 minute journey of self-discovery, emerging with a newfound sense of self-confidence just in time for the closing credits. In a teen flick, the fondly-remembered social awkwardness of adolescence may trump the heavy-handed set-up of your basic vision quest (as it does in, say, in Vision Quest with Matthew Modine). On first blush, the quest of an L.A. real-estate agent to get in touch with his inner Will Ferrell would relegate I Love You, Man to the genre’s more cynically formulaic adult off-shoot, a far cry from the sweet innocence of all those guy-with-an-improbable-dream teen movies.
Anchored by Paul Rudd’s inspired, ad-lib-heavy performance as the touchy-feely but dude-banter deficient Peter Klaven (echoes of Cheers’ über-loser Cliff Claven), I Love You, Man dutifully touches on every generic cliché. With a series of jokes tailored to viewers who find oral sex, gayness and excessive pubic hair inherently amusing (full disclosure: I love the pubic hair humor), the talky opening scenes unsubtly establish our hero’s problem. After Klaven’s dad offers the humiliating dinner-table revelation that he prefers the company of Peter’s gay brother Robbie (Andy Samberg), Peter has no choice but to admit he has a problem in the male-bonding department. Faster than you can say “Dude von Dudenstein,” Peter enlists Robbie’s help in securing a dependable bromance partner to act as best man for his upcoming wedding to Zooey (Rashida Jones in full Jennifer Aniston mode). A series of encounters with unsuitable, one-punchline candidates follow, including the ever-popular Overly Flirtatious Gay Dude, the Really, Really Old Dude, and the random Dude Whose Voice Cracks (Joe Lo Trogolio, completely devoid of his Superbad creep-appeal).
Other than Jon Favreau’s winning turn as a hard-drinking douchebag too advanced for a beginning bromancer like Peter, the preliminaries are all paint-by-numbers. With the delayed entrance of Peter’s bro-soulmate, the infantile womanizer Sydney Fife (Jason Segel), the ingenious, gender-inverted parody of a date movie takes flight. The chemistry between Sydney’s nonthreatening, overgrown infant (essentially a neutered version of Segel’s Knocked Up character) and Peter’s hapless anti-dude is an effective spoof on the opposites-attract cliché of the typical guy-meets-girl chick flick. Watching Rudd improv his way through inept phone messages and farewells to man-dates illustrates why he’s been such a welcome addition to the Apatow stable of frustrated stand-up comics turned A-List stars. The funniest scenes between Segel and Rudd have a loose ad-libbed feel, as they trade Andre the Giant references, geek out over Rush, and banter about the Hulk. While the chemistry suggests the likely real-world friendship between the pair, the gags never rise above the routine: fart jokes, piles of dog shit, men speaking in funny Euro-accents (recalling two separate bits from the Funny People trailer; Serbian hunks take note, send those clip reels to Judd Apatow Productions). The Hulk and Rush references lead to inevitable, perfunctory cameos by Lou Ferrigno and the iconic band, filling in for the Kiss jokes in Role Models and appearances by George Clinton in PCU, Snoop Dogg in Old School, and Gary Coleman in an upcoming movie I’d rather not name.
Rudd and Segel’s enthusiasm for the material is infectious, and the blend of buddy comedy and pseudo-chick flick is shrewdly crafted to appeal to the broadest possible date-night demographic. Seeing the film with a diverse Friday night audience, I heard the first post-credits ovation from a crowd of jaded Los Angelenos since a Valley showing of the vastly funnier Tropic Thunder. For those with undemanding expectations, the film will likely prove more than satisfying. The clever use of well-known L.A. locations and narratives (the Venice Muscle Beach scene, fish tacos, the gentrification of downtown) provides a bit of resonance. But it falls short of the geographic singularity of an L.A. Story by avoiding acknowledgment that countless career-obsessed Angelenos have long since traded youthful nights of bromantic carousing for an insular freeway-centric existence.
As with any date movie, the conflict is storytelling at its most elemental: Will true love win out? In this case, the love story between Peter and his mystery man Sydney is far more compelling than the sub-plot about Peter and Zooey’s anxiety over their upcoming wedding. There’s a noticeable lack of drama in either story, possibly because the plot travels in the opposite direction of the usual relationship comedy. Rather than beginning with a lonely single guy (or gal) loyally supported by a pack of loser friends, I Love You, Man begins with a perfect couple, one half of which is sorely lacking in the loser friend department. Perhaps searching for a guy willing to act infantile with is innately less dramatic and improbable than searching for a person you’d want to wake up next to every morning of the rest of your life. But with the flick-of-the-wrist effort characteristic of Segel’s ultra-laidback Forgetting Sarah Marshall, I Love You, Man stirs up plenty laughs while staying determinedly in the sitcom-shallow end of the comedy-pool.
