For a movie originally titled, ‘Bromance’, this movie is pretty good. Paul Rudd plays Peter Klaven, a real estate agent living in LA. After he proposes to his girlfriend Zooey, (Rashida Jones), he comes to the realization that he doesn’t have any close male friends who could be his groomsmen, nevermind a best man. With the help of his brother (Andy Samberg), he sets off to meet a best friend.
He quickly discovers how hard it is to meet a nice guy in LA. He winds up on a series of tragic ‘man-dates’ with gay men, senior citizens, and other horror stories. His apparent salvation comes when he holds an open house to sell Lou Ferigno’s Beverly Hills mansion. There he meets Sydney Fife (Jason Segel). They chat and poke fun at someone trying to decide whether the house is a good buy or not. Peter takes a chance and calls up Sydney and they quickly bond in Sydney’s ‘man cave’, a garage filled with TVs, guitars and all sorts of toys for boys. Soon, Peter is having too much fun with Sydney, opting to play Rush songs at Sydney’s instead of watching HBO with his fiancée, which causes conflict.
Paul Rudd and Jason Segel are bang-on in this film and take comedy to some serious new heights. Much of Rudd’s characters humour comes from his awkwardness and goofy speech, making up words like odd words in a lame attempt to fit in. The scenes where Peter tries to meet new guy friends are also really funny (with the poker game being probably the best), as is his epiphany that he lacks any guy friends. Given the content of the film, it’s surprising that Judd Apatow isn’t involved somewhere, as the comedy and humour are similar to Knocked Up / Superbad / etc.
Some of the best scenes in the movie are stolen by supporting actors, like Jon Favreau and Jamie Pressley, who are play one of the nastiest onscreen couples I’ve seen in a long time. One of Zooey’s comments describes them perfectly, “They argue and yell at each other all day long and then spend all night having angry make-up sex. It’s creepy, let’s go home.” Andy Samberg is pretty much left out of most of the film, which is one of the few drawbacks of the movie, as his gay personal trainer character has some funny moments.
Don’t let the 14A rating scare you away either, there is no nudity, but there are plenty of risqué conversations and over-the-top cursing to prevent this from being yet another PG-13 disaster. And unlike some comedies, even if you’ve watched every trailer available on the internet, there are still plenty of jokes and gags to enjoy. This is one of the funnier movies I’ve seen in a while and highly recommend it.
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