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Movie:		6.0
Picture:		8.0
Sound:		8.0
Extras:		6.0
Score:		7.0

Director(s):	John Hamburg
Writer(s):	John Hamburg, Larry Levin
Starring:	Andy Samberg • J.K. Simmons • Jaime Pressly • Jason Segel • Jon Favreau • Paul Rudd • Rashida Jones
Genre:	Comedy
Website:	http://www.iloveyouman.com//
Release Date:	August 11, 2009
Rated:

List Price:	Blu-ray - $27.99
Amazon:

I had such high hopes for I Love You, Man. The Apatow crew seems to hit more than miss in their comedies and I thought for certain that the Paul Rudd and Jason Segel combo would be an instant home run. Paul Rudd has always been a favorite actor of mine. I remember when I first saw him in Wet, Hot, American Summer as the negligent lifeguard. While the entire movie was filled with a great ensemble cast, his indifference to a child blowing his last dying bubbles from the bottom of a lake made me keel over in laughter. With Rudd’s recent comedy emergence as a star player in Role Models, I Love You, Man seemed like the perfect vehicle to just let loose. Couple Rudd with Jason Segel, whose roles in How I Met Your Mother and Forgetting Sarah Marshall I count among the top comedic performances of 2008, and you’d think they could do no wrong. Yet, I Love You, Man did go wrong – somewhere, it got stale.

Turning the typical wedding movie on its head in favor of a testosterone-oriented plot instead of an endless montage of brides trying on dresses and making snarky conversation with bridesmaids, I Love You, Man would show us what a man faces in those final days of bachelorhood. Meet Peter Klaven (Rudd). His professional life hinges on the sale of ex-Hulk Lou Ferrigno’s palatial estate as he pops the question to Zooey (Rashida Jones). Peter dreams of contracting his own subdivision and just needs a little bit of extra capital to get things going. However, upon popping the question he realizes there’s more missing from his life than just financial security – he has no male friends. How do you fill in your half of a wedding procession when your only friend is the one returning your “I do”? After fruitless attempts at friendship arranged by his brother (Andy Samberg), Peter finally just resigns himself back to his work – where he meets Sydney Fife (Segel). Sydney Fife’s friendship is everything male camaraderie tells us it should be. He talks openly about sex, plays Rush songs in his garage like he’s still a teenager in a garage band and encourages Peter to engage the wilder side of his personality.

Like any well-worn trope of its kind, the story of I Love You, Man can only progress by taking the relationship of Sydney and Peter to a breaking point. An unexpected side effect of Peter’s relationship with Sydney is the neglect of his newfound engagement to Zooey. In what seems far too quick a turnaround, Zooey’s attitude of “yay, Peter has a friend” morphs into a kind of bitter jealousy that only ever exists in a movie when extra drama is deemed necessary for a poignant yet comedic finale. Stressed by the upcoming nuptials and the tension at home, Peter and Sydney find a rift in their friendship with seemingly no hope of repair.

The real problem here is that the plot has been done hundreds of times before in countless movies about friendship. What was supposed to set I Love You, Man apart from the others of its ilk was the comedic powerhouse of Rudd and Segel on the screen for the majority of its duration. That wasn’t enough. Certainly there are a few really solid laughs, but the fact of the matter is the entire plot seems tired. It is tired. It’s been done countless times before – and we’ve seen most of them. Infusing the geriatric plot with a shot of raunchy-laugh vitamins doesn’t revitalize it – it just makes the senile jokes a little sprier. Forgetting Sarah Marshall (written by Segel) was infinitely fresher than what we get from I Love You, Man. Here all we have is the novelty of a pre-wedding movie about the guys instead of the girls (but even that’s been done to death in recent years). Finally, and the fact that I even have to say this is indicative of how clichéd the plot is, scripts where the newfound friend convinces the tightwad to scream (because it’ll make them feel better, it’s freeing, etc) should be burned as soon as that scene is read. It’s one of the most overused devices in film these days and it’s not shocking anyone anymore. We’re no longer sitting back with wide-eyes thinking ‘oh, that was surprising! What rage! What raw human emotion!’ Now we just want those scenes to never exist again.

Jason Segel and Paul Rudd remain comedic dynamos. They are hilarious. They just picked up the first buddy comedy and went at it – which is unfortunate. Two of the funniest rising personalities with similar senses of humor should spell instant comedic success under the guidance of the right script. I Love You, Man is not that script. They should have held out. But they didn’t and so we have to deal with this tepid piece of comedy that tries to redeem itself by throwing in cameos everywhere it can. Besides Lou Ferrigno we have Jaime Pressly, Jon Favreau, J.K. Simmons, Joe Lo Truglio and Thomas Lennon filling out the ranks. They’re all well used (especially Favreau) but they can’t repair the breach left by a wanting script.

Blu-ray Bonus Features

There’s nothing too special to be found here, but a gag reel starring Rudd and Segel makes for a pretty funny feature as does the “making of” portion which is also quite enjoyable in spite of the film’s less than stellar performance. What I really found worthwhile was the audio commentary with Rudd, Segel and Director John Hamburg – funny, oh so funny. Otherwise, feel free to skip the deleted and extended scenes, you don’t gain anything from the experience.