Preview: I Love You Man

By Sarah Sluis

Genres like romantic comedies work because they offer a predictable experience and predictable returns

at the box office. They're a safe investment, but in order to keep making them over and over again, you have to constantly innovate and twist the material. Sometimes, in the process, you move so far in another direction you create a new genre. Romantic comedies have gone through all types of incarnations, and the "bromance" might be the latest, based on my screening of Paramount's I Love You Man.

I Love You Man takes the plot structure of a romantic comedy, but recasts both the roles as men, and their relationship as that peculiar neologism "bromance." Unlike the buddy comedy, which brings to mind bantering cops and Grumpy Old Men cautiously circling each other before grudgingly accepting each other's company, I Love You Man has "man dates," nervous phone calls, and all the other hallmarks of a romantic comedy. It's also really, really funny, using that Judd Apatow-honed mix of vulgarity and sweetness. While not Apatow-produced, the movie casts Paul Rudd and Jason Segal, Apatow veterans, in leading roles.

Borrowing from those date-before-a-big-event deadline romantic comedies, Paul Rudd stars as a recently engaged "girlfriend guy," the kind of person who's always in a relationship. He lacks a cohort of male friends to hang out with�and invite to his wedding. Feeling freshly insecure about his lack of male friends, he decides to go in search of a best man for his wedding. There's the obvious joke (a botched date with a guy who assumes he is gay), before Rudd makes a friend at an open house (Jason Segal). Segal (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) plays a Venice Beach loafer who wears Uggs on the boardwalk, eclectic vintage tees, and doesn't clean up after his dog. He's really cool, so cool that Rudd goes through all those nervous first date jitters before they settle down into a friendship. They bond and jam together to the point where their friendship comes between Rudd's relationship with his fiance (the fantastic "The Office" veteran Rashida Jones). True to romantic comedy convention, it all ends up okay in the end.

As a female, I half-expected to be alienated by the story of male bonding, but Rashida Jones provides a great entry point into the film. She's totally amused by Rudd's nervousness picking up the phone with Segal, his rambling voice mails, and his awkward vulnerability around his budding relationship with Segal. Paul Rudd himself has always played the sensitive, slightly neurotic type, a "girl's guy," and he's just as puzzled and out-of-place in the "man cave" as a female would be.

Paul Rudd most recently starred in fall's Role Models, itself a story of male bonding, albeit one of a big brother-little brother mentoring variety. I Love You Man is far bolder than that film or Apatow's male bonding tales, so I'm curious to see what other stories of bromance come to Hollywood. Wes Anderson, for example, recently signed on to write a screenplay for My Best Friend, a remake of French film Mon Meilleur Ami, about a friendless man who must go in search of a best friend in order to settle a bet.

This cluster of successful films exploring extremely close male friendship begs the question--why now, what is it about these films that have made them resonate with audiences? They open dialogue about about what it means to be gay or straight, but, as a whole, have also been critiqued for negative portrayals. Screenwriter Mike White, for example, famously spoke out against Judd Apatow films for their jokes lambasting women and gay men. I Love You Man takes audience expectations of gay behavior and does the opposite. For example, Rudd's gay brother, played by SNL's Andy Samberg (of "Lazy Sunday" fame) plays an Equinox personal trainer that likes to seduce straight, married guys "for the challenge," a counterpoint to Rudd's pursuit of male friendship. In a role reversal, it is Samberg who must counsel Rudd on how to not come off as gay, and to avoid overstating his love of films such as The Devil Wears Prada. Whether this breaks down, or reinforces gay stereotypes will depend, I think, on the open-mindedness of the audience.

While I can only speculate on how America as a whole will respond to this "I need a male friend, but I don't want to come of as gay" comedy, I Love Man should be applauded for its light-hearted re-definition of the romantic and buddy comedy, and original portrayal of male friendship. The honest performances and "bromance" chemistry between Segal and Rudd is just as unusual, and real, as two teen boys telling each other "I Love You" at the end of Superbad, and makes you realize how few films put a close friendship center stage. Maybe it's only a matter of time before we see a male counterpoint to, dare I say, Thelma & Louise driving off a cliff together.