PAUL RUDD AND JASON SEGEL IN I LOVE YOU, MAN

Another Apatow episode about growing up--sort of

Since the Apatow comedies are all about male bonding, it makes sense to have a movie that approaches that topic head on. That's what I Love You, Man is. And as the bonding couple, who better than Mr. Cuddly, Paul Rudd, and Mr. Big Sweet Neurotic Baby, Jason Segel (who happen to have clicked together since a few years ago, and work so smoothly their hardest acting job was not to seem like old friends from the first scene). Apatow and some of the key members of his creative team come out of TV and it's best to see the feature films as like extended TV series episodes. This is a good one, but it's still more an episode than a feature film. Why? Because you can best appreciate it if you know all the other films and TV that fed into it.

"Apatow" is a rule of thumb term: different writers and directors are involved, but Judd produced 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad, Walk Hard, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Pineapple Express. (I forgot Drillbit Taylor; it might be best to do so.) It's funny, the fertile ground all these popular movies seems to come from is two TV series that basically flopped, or at least they were canceled after 17 or 18 episodes: Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. Viewers of these will know Jason Segel as an embarrassingly obsessive boyfriend; and then he got practically a whole movie to himself in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, as a boyfriend who can't--forget his girlfriend, that is.

I don't really think any of these movies are better than Freaks and Geeks or Undelcared, which were about high-schoolers and first-year college kids, respectively. Both are rich in turn-of-the-21st-century pop cultural implication because they're episodic ensemble pieces, as TV can be. A movie must highlight a few characters for a longer time, and the attention can be tough on the Apatow stable's style, and weaken the prevailing focus on types and generational behavior. Obviously the advantage accrued to the Apatow outlook in full length feature films like 40 Year Old Virgin and Superbad is the chance for more public, big-screen vulgarity and sexual explicitness. It gave them a chance to express what it is for boys to be boys and embrace the culture's greater willingness to talk dirty, like the guys in Kevin Smith's movies.

Like Seth Rogen, who even as a youngster in the making of Freaks, contributed to episodes, and more to Undecared and most to Superbad, Jason also writes. He contributed music to Freaks and Geeks and his own character in the series, Nick Andopolis, must owe much to his own conception; it flows into his Sarah Marshall character, and he wrote Sarah Marshall. In I Love You, Man, Jason's character, Sydney Fife, isn't wildly neurotic, stalking his girlfriend and about to burst into tears (or song) at the drop of a hat, as before. This time, he's more cool. He's super cool, for Peter Kleven, Paul Rudd's character, because he's available for "bromance," defined in The Urban Dictionary as "the complicated love and affection shared by two straight males."

Peter is getting married, and the premise of the movie is that it's time to find a best man and he realizes he has dated women and not spent much time with guys. He has no real male friends. At others' suggestion, he starts looking for them. For a while the movie provides vignettes of bad "man dates," including one where the date is gay, and kisses Peter. In this Peter's counseled by his almost ridiculously confident and macho gay brother, Robbie (Andy Samberg). The Apatow guys are ready to be gay-friendly, and the issue has to come up here, when men are going to love each other, but they're not ready to take any chances. To secure Robbie's straight-friendliness, his macho dad (the solidly male J.K. Simmons) even declares Robbie's his "best friend."

Peter sells real estate and while doing an open house for a Lou Ferrigno mansion (don't ask) Sydney appears, and the bonding begins. Sydney is available because he doesn't have a girlfriend. He's just a grown up boy, with his dog whose poop he doesn't clean up, his slob clothes, and his man cell with its masturbation chair. He's a guy-guy, but he can talk about stuff. He's direct and honest and demands that of Peter, which Peter finds attractive. So, they bond. Ostensibly Peter was just looking for a best man. But he finds out he's open to the rewards and challenges of bromance. Trouble is, his fiancee inevitably finds this a bit invasive. Man love takes time away from man-woman love.

Trouble comes when Sydney gives a toast at a pre-wedding family dinner where he's a bit too explicit in revealing his knowledge about a shortcoming in the sex between Peter and his fiancee, Zooey (Rashida Jones).

Actually the best parts of I Love You, Man, are where Peter struggles for a language of camaraderie when talking to Sydney, turning out silly abbreviations and nicknames for his new pal. Rudd manages to be both unguarded and smooth. Rudd hasn't always played such an adorable character as he does here. In truth I don't know where Paul Rudd came from (TV, somewhere), but he is universally beloved. Rudd's a nice-looking, sweet guy, sweet almost to the point of sappiness. But he can also be mean and manic: see his anti-Starbucks rant on YouTube. I can imagine him playing Neil LaBute. These guys are all smart and creative. People who trash the Apatow comedies are missing out on how great it is to have a bunch of talented guys able to alternately share acting, writing, and directing roles in an ongoing series of films that play off each other in inventive ways that express the American Zeitgeist. They're not being juvenile; they're describing and defining the universal male inability and unwillingness to grow up. I Love You, Man is more like a chick flick than they've done before--but a chick flick where the guys do the chick thing of sharing secrets and emotions. This being the case, it's a bit (but only a bit) less vulgar and sophomoric than other comedies in the series, and the language is toned down. But it still works and it's fun. Segal and Rudd work so well together you may not realize how much fun till later.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.