No Love

Rating: 5/10 (14 February 2009)

I Love You Man, despite a fine premise and sincere comedic overtones, falls flat, a victim of a scattershot script that’s never sure when it wants us to take everyone seriously and as a result never quite finds its way. Paul Rudd stars as a schlub who proposes to his fiancé (Rashida Jones) and then spends half the movie trying to find some guy, any guy, to be his best man, since he’s lacking in buds.
Along the way, he finds his new best friend ever in the person of Sydney Fife (Jason Segal), a wacky truth-telling soulmate who slowly begins to pry the hapless Pete away from his betrothed. Hilarity doesn’t quite ensue as much wander around aimlessly and flop down on a beanbag chair.
Pete’s a nice guy who has no guy friends at all. (I can sort of relate.) He’s always had girl friends, as opposed to girlfriends. Oh, let’s just call them gal pals. When Zooey asks him who he’s going to have as his best man, though, he’s at a loss. His dad? Nah, his dad’s best friends with Pete’s younger brother (Andy Samberg). Guys at work? Nah, they’re a bunch of go-getting, artificially tanned prima donnas. What about his fencing club? Nah, he doesn’t hang with them. So instead, on the advice of his brother, Pete goes on a series of “man dates” to find his special bro. One of these in particular, played by Thomas Lennon, has a surprise of his own.
But sort of by accident, he runs into Sydney, a dude who’s all that. Sydney listens and likes to hang with Pete. It’s sort of like courting a new girlfriend, really. And all of a sudden, Pete’s doing less wedding planning and more gallivanting, which is a word I picked up reading Hardy Boys mysteries. Now he’s going to Rush concerts and jamming on the bass.
For the most part, Rudd nails the part of the guy who’s just too awkward to fit in with the other guys. But he’s a little too awkward. One of the running jokes in the film is that Pete just can’t get the hang of new-fangled slang. Like when Syd calls him “Pistol” after Pete Maravich, and Pete can’t come up with anything that’s not completely unfunny. Not even funny in the amusingly cute and dorky way. He’s a classic dweeb, and yet here he is a realtor. (One of his clients, in another amusing gag, is Lou Ferrigno.) Because Pete’s so incredibly awkward, he’s a little hard to root for. If you’re the popular kind (or were back in the day), you feel a little guilty, laughing at Pete’s inadequacies. And if you’re the unpopular kind, you cringe a little, knowing perhaps it’s a bit too dead-on of a portrayal.
I also found it a bit difficult to tell where Sydney was coming from. Was he a good guy after all? Could this be a movie where the good guy turns out to be bad but it’s just a woeful misunderstanding? His motives were unclear until the end, when it was too late for me to care. He’s also a little annoying (he has some jumbly logic for not cleaning up after his dog, for instance) and creepy.
There are jokes here, mostly at Pete’s expense, and I understand that the movie wanted to be sensitive and meaningful while still being crude and raunchy, but it never found a middle ground to enjoy the best of both worlds. The laughs were good when they were there, but they were so scattershot that they felt like shooting icicles from a handgun. OK, bad simile, but you get the drift.