Some Good Laughs

Rating: 7/10 (27 March 2009)

Everyone would like to have a best friend or best man like Sydney Fife (Jason Segel). Peter (Paul Rudd) is engaged to the girl of his dreams and faced with an upcoming wedding realizes he has no male friends and certainly none close enough to be his best man. That is where Sydney comes into play. This movie strikes at the heart of all men who have either had their own version of a Sydney or are still looking for one. Sydney is a charming guy, he's personable, and opinionated, and before long he and Peter have become inseparable. Of course none of this is what Peter's fiancé has in mind.
While there are some laughs to be had, and I think you see where I'm going with this, this is your basic romantic-comedy which means that it is very formula based. The movie is like a dozen other films with just a little bit of new stuff thrown on top. Paul Rudd is good, as always, and give his standard nice guy act. It was also great to see Lou Ferigno without green paint though he still could not escape the Hulk reference and probably never will. Jason Segel provides one of the better performances in the film, but he has plenty of models to refer to in other films in order to get it right.
Certainly the movie can only be credited with all the great actors in the film. Rudd is joined by J.K. Simmons and Jane Curtain as dad and mom and little brother is Andy Samberg. It is always good seeing Jon Favreau on screen and he's paired up with Jaime Pressly. John Hamburg makes his leap from directing television with I Love You, Man and some great scripts.
The film has to get in line with a lot of other very similar movies but that doesn't make it too much less funny. The film would do a lot better to have relied on its original material rather than the heavily formulated script. Given Hamburg's ability to turn out a decent script it is too bad that he could not save an entirely new script for himself to direct here.