I Love You Man

I have a little bit of a bias towards this movie. I Love You, Man is a movie that I watched with one of my best friends in the world. All we need to do is quote a line from this movie and we lose our shit. This is basically our fall back movie if there is nothing else to watch. Every time I watch this movie or even see this movie, I think of my friend. Its hard for me to say anything bad about this movie.

I will try, but I make no promises that this will be a fair review because in all honesty, it probably won't be.

I Love You Man is the story of a young couple, Peter and Zooey (played by Paul Rudd and Rashida Jones). Peter proposes to Zooey after 8 months of dating and the two happily start planning for their wedding. But as they start planning, Zooey starts realizing that Peter doesn't have any close guy friends and nobody nearly close enough to be his best man. In order to make his fiance happy, Peter makes it his goal to make a friend in time for his wedding.

Just as Peter is about to give up after several hilarious and awkward "man-dates", he meets Sydney Fife (played by Jason Segel) who attends one of his open houses at the house of "The Hulk" Lou Fourigno that Peter is trying to sell.

The two immediately hit it off and eventually a fun friendship blossoms.

The relationship between Paul Rudd and Jason Segel is a lot of fun. At the beginning of the film, Peter's brother (played by Andy Samberg) he clearly states that Peter is more of a girlfriend guy rather than a guy friend guy. He spent the majority of his time with his girlfriends that he never really knew how to make guy friends... The great things is, I know people like this, I've been like this before.

Furthermore, they treat this movie like a romantic comedy, except the two main characters are two guys and instead of a romantic relationship, its a bromance.

And that's another relatable part of the movie, especially for guys. Its easy to see your own relationship in these two. While the movie may be aimed more towards men than women, I think a lot of the comedy comes from both the humor and how relatable the movie can be.

Like all comedies, its mainly a question of preference. You may not find the movie overly funny, or you may. The thing that is appealing about this movie is that while it is a raunchy comedy, its not nearly as raunchy as something like Ted and could possibly appeal to a wider audience. Again, its all a matter of taste, but I find this movie hilarious.

The cast is a really fun one as well. As stated before, the relationship between Peter and Sydney is only made better by the performances of Paul Rudd and Jason Segel. Peter and Sydney are incredibly contrasted characters, Peter being reserved and timid, while Sydney is obnoxious, out spoken, and vulgar.

 What's more is the relationship between Peter and Zooey. I don't know what it is, but Rashida Jones is very good at playing the cute, modest girlfriend. I think its a fun relationship though probably not the best relationship ever done on screen.

The focus of the movie isn't on these two but its passable and the two do have some fun chemistry.

The other cast members are a lot of fun. As stated before, Andy Samberg plays Peter's brother who is gay and is an expert on making friends. His character is funny because he says he gets bored with pursuing gay men and wants more of a challenge so he pursues straight men and actually succeeds. J.K. Simmons plays Peter's father, Jaime Pressley and Jon Favreau play a dysfunctional couple who do nothing but fight. There's a couple other small performances that make this movie a lot of fun.

The main draw of the movie is the emphasis on bromances and Peter's quest to find a friend.

He goes on a series of man-dates. He gets set up, he does online friend finding, he actually goes out with a guy who confuses their outing as a gay date.

Its a lot of fun!

Then you have Peter and Sydney hanging out which is a lot of fun.

Like I said before, its a movie that plays off the motifs of a romantic comedy but puts it in the setting of a bromance. That means you'll get your same three acts, the eventual falling out, the inevitable reconciliation. But some how the movie remains fun and enjoyable despite being a little bit predictable.

I could maybe say that the movie slows down or becomes a little convoluted near the end when there's conflict within the relationship between Zooey and Peter and furthermore with Sydney. But like I said at the beginning, I might be a little bit bias. I absolutely love this film.

I can't necessarily call it a comedic classic as its too early and too "obscure" of a comedic film to have that big of an impact yet, but I know that years down the road, I'll probably look back at this film as one of my favorite comedies when I was in my late teens/ early twenties.

I think the movie is full of a lot of inside jokes and the more and more you watch the movie I think the lines will become more and more iconic.

Now... that's my experience.

You may love I Love You Man like I do, but you might not.

I always find it difficult to review comedic movies. I always refer back to my review of Spaceballs. Its a movie that a lot of people enjoy but I personally cannot stand.

This is one of the things I'm incredibly interested in hearing from readers, what kind of humor people like.

The other thing that I pull from this movie is Paul Rudd as a leading man. He's done it before but this is the best example i know of. Since I'm incredibly interested in comic book movies, this movie is one of the movies I look to when I'm trying to decide whether or not Ant-man is going to go well or not.

I'm personally a little skeptical on his ability to carry a superhero film on his own and if I'm only going off of this movie its because he's helped by Jason Segel who has had share of comedic movies he's been the star of.

I'm still want to see Ant-man, I want it to be awesome. Furthermore I love this movie, but I don't think it makes a great case for Rudd.

I could be wrong, I want to be wrong, I want to see Rudd own it. But I'm not quite sure. We will see come August.

Overall, I really love I Love You Man. Its a really fun comedy, a new spin on an old formula and will probably go down as one of my favorite comedies of today. Are there problems? Probably, but I was laughing so hard I could never pick them out.

But what do you think of I Love You Man? Do you find it funny or do you think I'm overselling it? Comment and Discuss below! Also shoot me a tweet @cmhaugen24 and follow me for updates on the blog and other random I post up there.

I'll leave you with this. Jason Segel and Paul Rudd did an interview to promote the movie. Its quite the funny interview. I'm not sure if they were high or what, but its really quite funny. Enjoy!