I Love You, Man (2009)

The appearance of Paul Rudd and Jason Segel on the poster should tell you that I Love You, Man is not your typical gross-out, buddy movie. It's so much better.

These men are the thinking person's comedians presenting us with the multi-dimensional characters of Peter Klaven (Rudd) and Sydney Fife (Segel). Peter's a real estate agent whose just proposed to his girlfriend (Rashida Jones). Her friends have noticed that Peter doesn't seem to have any guy friends of his own and everyone's wondering who his best man will be. He realizes he doesn't know how to go out and make guy friends. He doesn't play poker. He doesn't go out drinking. He doesn't do any of the typical things guys do with their buddies.

Luckily for him, he hosts an open house at Lou Ferrigno's house and Sydney is in attendance (to pick up women and score free food). It's here where they first begin to bond. Of course the two men are opposites in many ways. Sydney is a laid back, confident, philosopher-type while Peter is an uptight, timid, by-the-rules man.

Peter somehow gets the courage to call up Sydney to hang out and the friendship that grows out of that comes off as genuine while still being highly entertaining. The guys share a love of Rush and enjoy hanging out in Sydney's "Man Cave". Peter finally has someone he can talk to about anything and Sydney has someone to hang out with when all his other friends have to go home to their wives and kids.

Both Rudd and Segel play off each other with ease. It's nice to see two actors better known for their supporting roles (with the exception of Segel's recent Forgetting Sarah Marshall) shine as leads. Writer/Director John Hamburg has given them some fun material to work with, although there was definitely a fair share of improvisation as well.

Andy Samberg and J. K. Simmons in supporting roles as Peter's brother and father respectively steal the screen in their moments with their simple, seriousness. In fact there's a full cast of comedians doing a nice job of not stepping on each others' toes while taking their characters very seriously. This I Love You, Man team leaves us with something that is funny, yet relatable all the while feeling surprisingly fresh.

Rating: 4/5
Recommended for: Adults who want a feel-good movie that also makes you laugh. Also Rush fans.

Extended Review: After watching the metric ton worth of extras on the DVD, it's easy to see that a) these people had a blast making this movie and b) Hamburg and the editing team had a lot of decisions to make for the final cut of this film. Often when watching deleted or extended versions of scenes, the reasons they were cut are quite apparent. For I Love You, Man, the best reasons seem to be just that they went with an alternate version of the line or it'd make the film 4 hours long to keep it in there. So much of what didn't make it into the film was just as funny as some of the stuff that did make it. You don't see that very often.