Wouldn't even have been good in 3D

Rating: 3/10 (5 November 2009)

I was really shocked by this flick; I'm not in the least bit prudish, however, the barrage of unnecessary profanity was the only thing that kept me awake...everyone was so unbelievably, defiantly stupid it made me want to move to another country and see if smarter people live there--people who don't make, or like, movies about people like this.
The plot concerns an inexplicably successful man (Paul Rudd) with the social skills of someone with severe mental challenges nearing his wedding date. Through a series of contrivances so obvious even our numb-nuts hero would figure them out, he deduces that he needs male friends. Enter Jason Segel, resident guru in all things masculine, who proves he's a man by letting his little dog evacuate its bowels on Venice Beach and doesn't clean it up, hyuck hyuck. Of course, the two boy-men strike up a "bromance," (with "jamming" to 80's cliché band Rush replacing sexual intercourse in an endless and unfunny montage where the two actors were obviously allowed free reign to improv and the editor had to try to piece something together from the slim pickin's) and all sorts of gay-ish situations and complications arise that illustrate that, gee, if a guy has a relationship with a guy, in SOME ways it's almost like a guy having a relationship with a girl! Dude! No way, man! Gee, I wonder if everything will turn out all right in the end or not?
If you had any fears that things were not going to work out in this story, indeed, if you have any doubts at all about where the plot goes from there, this movie is ideal for you. It takes place in "romantic comedy" land, which bears little resemblance to the earth most of us inhabit, and everyone talks like they're on a TV sitcom, with their amusing lines prepared for them. The idea that a character as stupid and dull as the one Paul Rudd plays could have a girlfriend at all, let alone a job selling multi-million dollar houses for celebrities, further proves the theory that Americans are, and have been for some time, fascinated with seeing the talentless and dim-witted in the media. Where once we idolized people for being intelligent, skilled and creative we now make heroes out of people who fart and puke on each other, and think it's funny. There must be satisfaction and security to a good many people to see inept fools magnified and glorified on screen. How else to explain the likes of a movie like this, which cost a good deal to make and made a good deal in return?
Once upon a time, a "good story" involved someone who had to prove his worth in order to attain the things he wanted out of life, usually at great cost, and the satisfaction of watching came from learning that the best rewards in life grow out of hard work and great interpersonal evolution--something that must have been more true then than it is now in the age of reality TV. Today, people apparently want to believe that you can be ignorant, skill-less, short-sighted, utterly self-absorbed and hopelessly lacking in communicative skills, but still be rich and famous and a "star," without really even having to do anything but be the same moron you were yesterday--it's "the world" that's wrong and has to change, not the self-entitled individual. And you even get the hot girl.
That's what people want to see, or movies/TV shows like this wouldn't be made.
Someone I believed I knew and thought I respected handed this "film" to me and told me it was hands down the best thing he'd seen all year, perhaps even longer than that. I have no idea what to tell him when I hand it back. I suppose, simply, "Thanks for the loan and, well, it was great knowing you, sort of."
I wonder how much worse things get from here in the "comedy" genre--maybe next, as John Waters sort of predicted, they'll show people eating each others' colostomy bags for laughs, har har...oh wait, didn't the Farrely brothers already do that?