What passes for a thoughtful comedy these days.

Rating: 5/10 (5 March 2007)

A lot of reviewers seem to think that this is a thoughtful movie, a film that really captures some elusive truth about - I dunno - male/female relationships, or our society's attitudes towards sex, or whatever.
But in reality, this is pretty much your average sophomoric comedy, with perhaps a tiny bit more insight than you'd expect. The title character is presented in a somewhat sympathetic fashion (I guess), and I suppose that's surprising in a good way. However, this movie only appears sensitive and smart when viewed alongside, say, South Park; it's hardly a great character study like The Odd Couple, or a really novel and intelligent comedy like Groundhog Day.
The problem is that everybody in this movie is grotesque. Carell's character is an endearing dweeb, somewhat reminiscent of real dweebs, but in the end I found him too weedy and bizarre to be genuinely likable. His oversexed friends, meanwhile, are all pathetic jerks themselves, and the various chicks who show up during the film are usually trashy and scary. I suppose the only character who's really supposed to be nice is Carell's main love interest, Trish, but she comes across as bland compared to all the lunatics on display.
But maybe the real problem I had with the movie is that it's not actually laugh-out-loud funny. I thought they really tortured the scene when Carell's chest hair gets ripped off, for instance; it would've been boring enough at half the length. And some of the "famous" lines - "they felt just like bags of sand!" - really ain't as hilarious as all that.
Yeah, I think this movie ultimately doesn't know what it wants to be - insightful social commentary, or dumb frat-guy comedy. It settles for a middle ground, so it gets a middling rating from me. Just don't be fooled by glowing Ebert reviews or anything like that.