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A premarital grossout tailored for sex talk fans who
may have grown older but not wiser in that arena, I Love
You, Man explores the predicament of a geeky groom-to-be
with guy bonding issues that seem to annoy his fretting
fiancée more than him. And it's a case of the point of this
movie hardly being a point at all, but rather a pretext
for the male stars getting to goof around together on screen.***
Directed by John Hamburg (Meet The Parents, Zoolander)
and written in guy co-bondage of sorts with sometime Seinfeld
scribe Larry Levin, I Love You, Man stars Paul Rudd as reticent
pushover real estate drone, Peter. About to be married and
on that proverbial cloud nine, compliant loner Peter is
oblivious to numerous red flags that should have been raised
about his pushy, bubbly fiancée Zooey (Rashida Jones), who
is bent on molding the wimp into the makeover man she wants
him to be. Which means a weird prenuptial assignment that
he go out and find at least one male friend like right now,
so he can be as all around same-sex chummy as she is.***
After a series of disastrous man dates, including a
creepy male prospect who misreads the premeditated matchup
as gay bonding and won't take no for an answer, Peter settles
on a chance encounter with Sydney (Jason Segel). He's a
carefree slacker musician with peculiar tendencies, like
delighting in leaving his pooch's public poop around so
he can watch strangers slipping into it u nawares, and maintaining
an elaborate masturbation nook on his seedy premises.***
Basically this pal from hell scenario doesn't go much
of anywhere, and at times deteriorates even further when
the yarn just seems to be hanging on by a narrative thread.
And when Jon Favreau turns up as bridesmaid Jaime Pressly's
hostile, perpetually scowling mate and the unfortunate object
of Rudd's impromptu super-barf, matters aren't helped much
either to say the least. While an inserted contrived cameo
in which real estate client Lou Ferrigno/The Hulk gets to
face off against a flipped out Sydney who's convinced he
can deck the superhero offscreen, is about as mildly entertaining
as this guy movie gets.***
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