DVD Review: Cedar Rapids

Ed Helms’ leading-man debut is a funnier movie than The Hangover Part 2. It’s smarter, too.

Dying is easy and comedy is hard, as the famous adage goes, and by extension of that same logic it’s virtually impossible to get dark comedy right. The wreckage of failed attempts includes the best and the brightest artists of every comedy era, and not a few dramatic creators as well. Dark comedy – black comedy, gallows humor, cringe humor – carries its own additional pitfalls besides the usual minefield of problems awaiting its gentler cousin. And when dark comedy fails, too often the results land with a resounding thud, victims of creative overreach or slipshod understandings of tone.

Cedar Rapids, the often pitch-dark new effort from indie mainstay Miguel Arteta, walks its dark comedy tightrope constantly in danger of falling one way or the other. Though ultimately it succeeds, the suspense of waiting for it to collapse under its own ambitious weight suffuses virtually every scene. You almost come to care about the movie itself as much as its conventional story or oddball characters, wondering when at any second its whole artifice will come crashing down. It never does, thanks largely to its cast.

A star is brown: Helms

Small-town man-child Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) is sent by his boss (Stephen Root) at Brownstar Insurance to a regional convention after the agency’s alpha dog (Tom Lennon) dies of auto-erotic asphyxiation. Lippe isn’t ready for the responsibility, let alone the pressure of bringing home the convention’s “Two Diamond” award that the agency has secured several years in a row. But he goes anyway, propelled by his boss’ bullying. His wide-eyed, gawky enthusiasm, mixed with rustic suspicion for the dangers and promises of the titular “big city,” provide some of the film’s most unguarded moments.

The convention’s hotel (as uniformly cheerless, and cheerlessly uniform, as any of a million such places in America) and the people Lippe encounters there of course compel him to grow up emotionally and sexually. In particular, he finds himself drawn into the orbit of hard-partying, foul-mouthed policy “poacher” Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly), comparatively straight-laced Ronald Wilkes (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) and the sultry, melancholy Joan (Anne Heche.) The quartet goof their way through the three-day conference while Tim readies his presentation to convention patriarch Orin Helgesson (Kurtwood Smith). Moral fortitude and honesty count for a lot in winning the “prestigious” Two Diamond trophy, and in assenting to his new friends’ temptations – including a fling with Joan – Lippe risks costing his company the award.

Artete works well within the small confines of the hotel, showing the confines of each blandly friendly space and how, especially given the inhospitable winter outside, even such slim diversions as hotel bar margaritas and overheated pools can offer a welcome distraction. It helps a lot that Phil Johnston’s script does right by its main character, shrewdly demonstrating Lippe’s fish out of water ups and downs: his new friends are a welcoming, non-judgmental bunch, a distant cry from the McJesus snobbery of his home town co-workers and neighbors – the same people, Lippe is decent enough to remember, that depend on him. Of course everything works out in the end, but not before plenty of debauchery and clean, if slightly mean-spirited, fun.

As a comic leading man, Helms’ strengths center on the same aw, shucks likability that’s served him more or less unwaveringly since his tenure on The Daily Show. Lippe is similar to The Office‘s Andy Bernard, more naive but less obtuse, with a greater vulnerability as a result. It’s tempting to thumbnail Lippe as Bernard freed of The Office‘s self-conscious repetition of character and story beats, but there’s more – a little more – to him than that. Helms makes him sympathetic but stops short of making him pitiable or charismatic.

He’s backed by, well, a dream supporting cast for this type of project. Reilly is a leading man trapped in the body of a character actor, and every one of his scenes tends to upset the tenuous balance Artete strikes between Lippe and his surroundings. In fact for much of the film’s first hour, the energy level rises palpably whenever Reilly’s motor- and foul-mouthed party animal comes onscreen. Comedies often rise or fall on the quotability of their dialogue; Reilly has most of the lines you’ll want to repeat to your friends.

The surprise performance, however, belongs to Heche as the otherwise content soccer mom who uses insurance conventions as a vacation from the staid security of her normal life. Heche is sexy, sad, and smart all at the same time, without resorting to vamping or overheated line readings to achieve said results. Her confession to Lippe about the normalcy of her life and the release of Cedar Rapids carries some of the film’s best writing, and her well-modulated delivery of the scene works as an oasis to the dark shenanigans displayed almost everywhere else. Heche’s career was swallowed years ago by the media’s provincial fascination with her sexuality; this performance earns her a shot at a larger comeback vehicle.

Making the most of smaller roles, Whitlock makes a charming straight man for the others, especially in a late scene in which he gets to spoof his role on The Wire. The prolific Root is hilarious as Lippe’s boss, and Smith brings the same imperial menace to Helgesson that he brought to all those years as That 70s Show‘s Red Foreman. Arrested Development fans may find themselves a little shocked to see Alia Shawkat, Maeby Funke herself, playing the hotel’s prostitute; the role allows her to say filthy things and look sultry, which for a career transition vehicle is possibly as good as it gets right now.

Cedar Rapids shouldn’t be confused for a great film, but it achieves its difficult ambitions while remaining entertaining, and it has the rare gift of growing in your memory after you leave the theatre. If its raunchy gags and sometimes awkward staging keep it from really developing into something approaching a classic modern dark comedy – Rushmore, to make a contemporary example, or Ruthless People - it’s trying for something riskier than the pot and potty humor that dominates too many modern “comedies” (Not least of which, obviously, The Hangover Part II.) It’s also, admittedly, refreshing to encounter a comedy that doesn’t bear Judd Apatow’s factory-pressed mixture of bittersweet nostalgia and stunted male growth.

Dying is easy, dark comedy is hardest, and ultimately Cedar Rapids is a damned funny movie with a cast full of people who should appear more than they do. Given a small release in the theatres last winter, it’s unmissable home video entertainment.

- Michael Kabel

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Review: Cedar Rapids

Ed Helms strikes off on his own, into darker territory than you might expect.

Dying is easy and comedy is hard, as the famous adage goes, and by extension of that same logic it’s virtually impossible to get dark comedy right. The wreckage of failed attempts includes the best and the brightest artists of every comedy era, and not a few dramatic creators as well. Dark comedy – black comedy, gallows humor, cringe humor – carries its own additional pitfalls besides the usual minefield of problems awaiting its gentler cousin. And when dark comedy fails, too often the results land with a resounding thud, victims of creative overreach or slipshod understandings of tone.

Cedar Rapids, the at-times pitch-dark new effort from indie mainstay Miguel Arteta, walks its dark comedy tightrope constantly in danger of falling one way or the other. Though ultimately it succeeds, the suspense of waiting for it to collapse under its own ambitious weight suffuses almost every scene. You almost come to care about the movie itself as much as its conventional story or oddball characters, wondering when at any second its whole artifice will come crashing down. It never does, thanks largely to its cast.

A star is brown: Helms

Small-town man-child Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) is sent by his boss (Stephen Root) at Brownstar Insurance to a regional convention after the agency’s alpha dog (Tom Lennon) dies of auto-erotic asphyxiation. Lippe isn’t ready for the responsibility, let alone the pressure of bringing home the convention’s “Two Diamond” award that the agency has secured several years in a row. But he goes anyway, propelled by his boss’ bullying. His wide-eyed, gawky enthusiasm, mixed with rustic suspicion, for the dangers and promises of the titular “big city” provide some of the film’s most unguarded moments.

The convention’s hotel (as uniformly cheerless, and cheerlessly uniform, as any of a million such places in America) and the people Lippe encounters there of course compel him to grow up emotionally and sexually. In particular, he finds himself drawn into the orbit of  hard-partying, foul-mouthed policy “poacher” Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly), comparatively straight-laced Ronald Wilkes (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) and the sultry, melancholy Joan (Anne Heche.) The quartet goof their way through the three-day conference while Tim readies his presentation to convention patriarch Orin Helgesson (Kurtwood Smith). Moral fortitude and honesty count for a lot in winning the “prestigious” Two Diamond trophy, and in assenting to the group’s temptations – including a fling with Joan – Lippe risks costing his company the award.

Artete works well within the small confines of the hotel, showing the confines of each blandly friendly space and how, especially given the inhospitable winter outside, even such slim diversions as hotel bar margaritas and overheated pools can offer a welcome distraction. It helps a lot that Phil Johnston’s script does right by its main character, shrewdly demonstrating Lippe’s fish out of water ups and downs: his new friends are a welcoming, non-judgmental bunch, a distant cry from the McJesus snobbery of his home town co-workers and neighbors – the same people, Lippe is decent enough to remember, that depend on him. Of course everything works out in the end, but not before plenty of debauchery and clean, if slightly mean-spirited, fun.

As a comic leading man, Helms’ strengths center on the same aw, shucks likability that’s served him more or less unwaveringly since his tenure on The Daily Show.  Lippe is similar to The Office‘s Andy Bernard, more naive but less obtuse, with a greater vulnerability as a result. It’s tempting to thumbnail Lippe as Bernard freed of The Office‘s self-conscious repetition of character and story beats, but there’s more – a little more – to him than that. Helms makes him sympathetic but stops short of making him pitiable or charismatic.

He’s backed by, well, a dream supporting cast for this type of project. Reilly is a leading man trapped in the body of a character actor, and every one of his scenes tends to upset the tenuous balance Artete strikes between Lippe and his surroundings. In fact for much of the film’s first hour, the energy level rises palpably whenever Reilly’s motor- and foul-mouthed party animal comes onscreen. Comedies often rise or fall on the quotability of their dialogue; Reilly has most of the lines you’ll want to repeat to your friends.

The surprise performance, however, belongs to Heche as the otherwise happy soccer mom who uses insurance conventions as a vacation from the staid security of her normal life. Heche is sexy, sad, and smart all at the same time, without resorting to vamping or overheated line readings to achieve said results. Her confession to Lippe about the normalcy of her life and the release of Cedar Rapids carries some of the film’s best writing, and her well-modulated delivery of the scene works as an oasis to the dark shenanigans displayed almost everywhere else. Heche’s career was swallowed years ago by the media’s provincial fascination with her sexuality; this performance earns her a shot at a larger comeback vehicle.

Making the most of smaller roles, Whitlock makes a charming straight man for the others, especially in a late scene in which he gets to spoof his role on The Wire. The prolific Root is hilarious as Lippe’s boss, and Kurtwood Smith brings the same imperial menace to Helgesson that he brought to all those years as That 70s Show‘s Red Foreman. Arrested Development fans may find themselves a little shocked to see Alia Shawkat, Maeby Funke herself, playing the hotel’s prostitute; the role allows her to say filthy things and look sultry, which for a career transition vehicle is possibly as good as it gets right now.

Cedar Rapids shouldn’t be confused for a great film, but it achieves its difficult ambitions while remaining entertaining, and it has the rare gift of growing in your memory after you leave the theatre. If its raunchy gags and sometimes awkward staging keep it from really developing into something approaching a classic modern dark comedy – Rushmore, to make a contemporary example, or Ruthless People – it’s trying for something riskier than the pot and potty humor that dominates too many modern “comedies.” It’s also, admittedly, refreshing to encounter a comedy that doesn’t bear Judd Apatow’s factory-pressed mixture of bittersweet nostalgia and stunted male growth.

Dying is easy, dark comedy is hardest, and ultimately Cedar Rapids is a damned funny movie with a cast full of people who should appear more than they do.  See it  in the theatre if you can, but don’t miss it on home video.

- Michael Kabel

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Miscellaneous Debris, June 2010 Edition

Our monthly roundup of news, reviews and speculation that didn’t wind up with a full post.  

It's hot outside.

 The problem with movies is that they’re too often interrupted by the more meager demands and rewards of real life. We meant to go to the movies this weekend but never got around to it, busy instead with one dreary thing after another, and anyway there’s nothing playing at the local theatres that seems exciting (We’re not twelve years old, and as aging Whedonites we don’t care for Twilight).  

Actually, we’re taking the rest of this week off for the Fourth of July holiday weekend, returning Tuesday, July 6. In the meantime, here’s all the stuff we thought mostly worth discussing over the month of June, items that didn’t rate an entire blog post of their own but nevertheless seem noteworthy for one reason or another.  

1. Besides the ignominy of so many thuds, maybe the nastiest thing about this summer of woe for the box office isn’t the quantity of flops but rather the media’s glee in pronouncing several films as failures. We haven’t crunched the numbers, but we don’t imagine 2010 necessarily has more or bigger turkeys than most other summers; without a giant tentpole movie – like the kind Toy Story 3 is shaping up to become – the desperation at the box office has just seemed worse.  

If The A-Team, Prince of Persia, and a few others have underwhelmed, it’s not necessarily a comment on their quality or on the public’s shifting tastes. It means audiences ignored them for whatever reasons normally affect such things, not a little of which inevitably seems to have something to do with marketing. Actually, The A-Team has good word of mouth, as did Prince of Persia. Some of the bombs, admittedly, were odious: both Jonah Hex and Sex and The City 2 were answers to questions nobody asked, efforts apparently massaged into oblivion by studio meetings and conferences. Elsewhere the sharks have circled the Tom Cruise – Cameron Diaz vehicle Knight and Day for weeks; our guess is that the film will quietly make a modest profit.  

2. The idea that such older-skewing films as Knight and Day and Sex and The City 2 should fail echoes a topic that’s gone around for a couple of years now: the idea that the time of the movie for grownups is in its twilight. This summer the two biggest successes so far, The Karate Kid and now Toy Story 3 – are both distinctly kid-friendly. Not to over-simplify, but this is partly because children don’t go to school in the summertime and these two products – both reminders of beloved films from other eras – are likely irresistable to thirty-something parents who remember the one film from their teens and the other from their 20′s.  The films aren’t kids’ movies so much as entertainment that’s palatable all the way around the SUV.  

3. Steve Carrell says he’s leaving The Office at the end of the series’ upcoming seventh season in order to spend more time with his family. We lost interest in The Office a while back – the “Dwight always wins” story policy froze us out – but nevertheless we’re curious to see how they handle Carrell’s exodus. Meanwhile his animated feature Despicable Me opens next week, with his adult feature Dinner For Schmucks (in which he seems to combine his Michael Scott schtick with George Clooney’s haircut circa 1994) opening at the end of the month.  

4. Speaking of that film (and its vaguely amusing trailer below), it’s another project to co-star Zack Galifianakis, his fourth released since The Hangover last year. Nothing against him getting rich, but we’re thinking he might start to worry about over-exposure. The industry has made similar mistakes before: taking a promising character actor and throwing him into every project available at the time seldom turns out well, either for the audience or for the performer. For lack of a better term, we call this accelerated career half-life the Zahn Effect.  

  

Yelchin in Terminator Salvation

 5. With rumors that an announcement regarding the next actor to play Spider-Man just around the corner, we want to officially endorse Anton Yelchin for the role. The young Russian actor did great work in both Terminator Salvation and Star Trek, giving better performances than anyone expected. With the upcoming fourth film reportedly a reboot (goodbye, disco-dancing hipster Spidey), Yelchin is exactly the rising talent that a fresh take on the franchise needs. Now, who to play Mary Jane Watson? Hopefully, Easy A’s Emma Stone.  

6. Mad Men, the best show on TV, makes it season four debut in just under four weeks, on July 25. The sleek new preview poster started showing up online a couple of weeks or so ago, apparently hinting at the wide-open future that Don Draper and his fellow Sterling-Cooper refugees face now that they’ve struck out on their own. We’re also glad to learn, somewhat belatedly, that Jared Harris, who plays sensitive British executive Lane Pryce, has been promoted to regular cast member as of the upcoming season. Plot and story details still remain maddeningly elusive – series mastermind Matt Weiner could/should run the CIA – which makes the wait that much harder. Our own small wish is to see the return of schoolteacher/Barbara Hershey lookalike Suzanne Farrell (Abigail Spencer). 

7. A week later, AMC premieres (or re-premieres, following a June 13 sneak peek) its brainy new thriller Rubicon, starring James Badge Dale as a government intelligence analyst who realizes his bosses take part in a vast conspiracy pulling the strings of world events. Ostensibly a complex, cooly intelligent mind-bender of a serial – think The X-Files without the geeky weirdness – it’s as different from the network’s other two shows as Mad Men and Breaking Bad are from each other. Miranda Richardson, Arliss Howard, and Jessica Collins co-star, with the great Peter Gerety (Homicide: Life On The Street) in a crucial guest-starring role in the pilot. Expect something adrenalin-fueled, like 24 or Alias, and you’ll be disappointed. The show has moodier, slower-burning intentions in mind. 

8. Finally, we can’t think of a better way to celebrate America than with this clip from The Candidate, director Michael Ritchie’s still-topical skewering of politics and the otherwise good people who get drawn into its seductive vortex. Robert Redford plays Bill McKay, the activist running for a Senate seat against a folksy conservative incumbent with the awesome name Crocker Jarmon. Released in 1972, McKay’s exhausted meltdown into a gibberish of buzz words remains hilarious – and relevant – almost forty years later. 

Happy July 4, everybody. God bless America.

- Michael Kabel

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Miscellaneous Debris, February 2010 Edition

The latest installment of our Movitetone-newsreel-in-blog-form recurring feature.  

Seriously, is it Spring yet? Like a lot of the United States, winter’s icy fingers continue to clutch and grab at us even while February goes out like a lamb. A frozen solid lamb, encased in thick, sticky ice. We didn’t get to the movies much this month, mainly because a lot of the new releases didn’t interest us and anyway we were working on other things. Still, a few items popped up on our radar, and they’re listed below in no particular order of importance.  

All opinions are our own, by the way. They may be different from yours. That’s okay.  

1. Following up our earlier obituary for Brittany Murphy, the Los Angeles Coroner’s final report  indicates there were no signs of drug or alcohol abuse, and that the actress’ body was not dangerously thin at the time of her death. The 84-page report was released Febuary 25, and reiterated earlier conclusions that Murphy’s death was accidental but also preventable, and that no foul play was suspected.  

2. Ungracefully moving from the tragic to the inane, rumors circulated the Internet this week that John Krasinski (The Office) may sign to play Marvel Comics’ super-patriot Captain America. We’ll just add our voice to the chorus of skepticism. Krasinski isn’t a bad actor, yet we don’t see him as the World War II battlefield leader that the script to The First Avenger: Captain America reportedly requires. Of the possibilities mentioned in this latest round of rumors, we’d probably go with Scott Porter (Friday Night Lights), even though we think most of them – including Michael Cassidy, Mike Vogel, and Chace Crawford – are all too young for the role. Remember that Iron Man was a surprise hit thanks in large part to the irresistable performance given by a 43-year old Robert Downey, Jr.  

3. If you’re not already watching Southland, the serial drama TNT rescued from the ever-widening NBC vortex, the show’s second season begins this Tuesday, March 2. Its initial half-dozen or so episodes had some rough patches, including a surfeit of characters jockeying for clarity in the breakneck plotlines, but the episodes themselves were excellent more often than not. So far the standouts among the cast are Regina King as a LAPD homicide detective slowly buckling under the strain of her job, and Shawn Hatosy as a gang task force agent trying to balance a neurotic wife (Emily Bergl) with working against a ruthless gang that may have him outsmarted.  

  

4. With the Academy Awards just nine days or so away, we’re still mulling over our predictions. We sort of expect Avatar to get Best Picture, given the Academy’s hunger for populist appeal just now, though we’re usually and embarrassingly wrong about such things. If we got to choose the winners, we have to say we’d pick The Hurt Locker from the (long) list of nominees. At the least, that film’s Jeremy Renner deserves the Best Actor nod.  

We’ll have our complete list of awards picks next week.  

5. A recent viewing of The Magnificent Seven got us to wondering who’d play the mighty group of gunfighters in a new version. We’re actually a little surprised Hollywood hasn’t tried it already. (The burly excess of the upcoming The Expendables with its vaguely similar concept notwithstanding.) We imagine Chow Yun-Fat in the Chris Adams role (played in the original by Yul Brynner), with George Clooney as Vin (Steve McQueen) and Clive Owen as the knife-throwing Britt (James Coburn.) We can also see Mad Men‘s John Slattery as the dapper, nerve-wracked Lee (Robert Vaughn) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the firebrand Chico (Horst Bucholz). Finally, who better than Javier Bardem to play the bandit king Calvera (Eli Wallach)? Post your own ideas below, please, but here’s the trailer to the original:  

  

6. Pixar’s John Carter of Mars project keeps picking up talented cast members, and as longtime fans of the Edgar Rice Burroughs novels we keep getting more enthused for the film, the studio’s first attempt at live action. Besides stars Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins, the cast now also features Mark Strong (Sherlock Holmes), Ciaran Hinds (There Will Be Blood), Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Willem Dafoe (Platoon), Samantha Morton (In America), Polly Walker (Rome), Thomas Haden Church (Sideways) and Dominic West (The Wire).  

The swashbuckling story (think Lord of the Rings crossed with Star Wars) tells of an American Civil War officer’s adventures on the barbaric world of Mars, or Barsoom, eventually uniting its several warlike races. Burroughs wrote more than a dozen stories set on the fictionalized planet, so Pixar undoubtedly has trilogy or more in mind. The film is set for release in 2012.  

Ask your parents: Leno

  7. We harbor little respect for the man and even less affection, but Jay Leno’s return to The Tonight Show and NBC’s willingness to bring him back on at the expense of the much funnier Conan O’Brien indicates something that a lot of the entertainment media likes to pretend doesn’t exist: the millions of television viewers who don’t give a shit about what’s hip or edgy or even on the pop culture radar at all.  As commentator Steve Sternberg points out, Leno’s audience isn’t anywhere near the over-celebrated 18-24 demographic, and likely remained unphased by the public sentiment that bolstered O’Brien in the recent debacle. We imagine Leno’s fan base typically skews toward having plenty of money, too, a quality we’re sure advertisers find appealing.  

8. Finally, we recently saw – and loved – Robert Siodmak’s 1948 film noir Cry of the City, starring Victor Mature and noir heavyweight Richard Conte (The Big Combo) in some of their finest performances. Lieutenant Candella (Mature) stalks career criminal Martin Rome (Conte) through as realistic a ghetto as was put on film up to that point. The film isn’t as famous as Siodmak’s next effort, Criss Cross (which we frankly find a little overrated), but it’s every bit as enjoyable for noir afficianados.  

The film isn’t available on DVD yet, but it is available on YouTube, and Fox Movie Classics has aired it several times recently, as well.  

  

We’ll be back next week. Thanks for reading.  

- Michael Kabel 

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DVD Review: The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

Raunchy, overlooked used car comedy arrives on DVD tomorrow.

Dumped into theatres late last summer and doomed to a quick box office death, The Goods: Live hard, Sell Hard deserves a better fate on home video. Though calling it a classic or even expert filmmaking would overstate the case a bit,  first-time director Neal Brennan and a huge, overqualified cast  manage build a loose, rambling movie that expects nothing of you but your own low expectations. Because of that, and sometimes despite it, the film is often riotously funny.

Like Talladega Nights and seemingly dozens of other Will Ferrell movies (Ferrell and frequent collaborator Adam McKay co-produced), The Goods puts an alpha dog personality in a working-class situation for trashy comic effect, relying on a barrage of potty language, sexual innuendo and slapstick violence to crowd-surf the audience from one gag to the next. Thrown in for good measure: weird, sometimes lovable supporting characters; an improbably warm-hearted romantic interest; and a shaggy plot hinging on personal honor. In fact, the film doggedly follows that blueprint, moving its characters from one gag or situation to the next while barely slowing down to establish context or meaning to the jokes. You laugh a lot while it’s happening, even as you’re aware everyone could manage to do better.

The saving grace is that most of the jokes are funny – sometimes very funny, with at least three extended gags that detonate with explosive comic payoff. “Used car mercenary” Don Ready (Jeremy Piven) and his team of high-pressure sales experts are hired by failing Temecula, California car patriarch Ben Selleck (James Brolin) to get rid of 200 cars over the Fourth of July weekend. Because the process of inventory liquidation only has so much comic potential, the script comes fully loaded with character baggage: Ready is haunted by a previous failure that ended in the death of his best friend. His teammates are bizarrely distracted by various sex-charged problems: oversexed Babs (Kathryn Hahn) lusts after Selleck’s man-child son (Rob Riggle); sensitive Jibby (Ving Rhames) longs to “make love” to a woman (as opposed to just having sex); financial wizard Brent (David Koechner) finds himself the reluctant object of Selleck’s homosexual advances.

Ready woos Selleck’s daughter Ivy (Jordana Spiro), despite her engagement to weaselly import car salesman/boy-band vocalist Paxton (Ed Helms). The film knows – and we know it knows – that the two are going to end up together, and their courtship has a going-through-the-motions quality despite Spiro’s luminous charm. Ready also finds a possible long-lost son in Selleck’s youngest employee Blake (Jonathan Sadowski), a junior salesman with all of his signature moves. While the potential in that setup teems with character and gag possibilities, the film never really gets the story thread moving. As with the other plotlines, it’s one more thing in the circus of the film’s action.

But despite all the characters and the bevy of jokes the film still sometimes manages to lose its momentum, especially during a plot twist late in the second act that feels forced to the point of snapping. Amplifying this problem is another issue, one of comic pitch: rather than lose additional time by going for depth, Brennan chooses instead to make the movie louder, ever louder. When Ready has his most sincere moment, it’s at the top of his lungs; characters incessantly shout at one another. Such zeal works in skit comedy, but repetitive scenes in a 90 minute film drag on the audience’s patience, raising the bar for the next gag to regain the comic momentum.

Piven charges Ready’s character with sleazy confidence, probably the only way to play such a outsized-by-design personality. Yet he sometimes stumbles giving Ready vulnerability or warmth. Hahn, Rhames and Koechner all make the most of their parts, each of which only comes down to a single character point anyway: the horny one, the sweet one, the smart one. Charles Napier, Tony Hale, and Ken Jeong (Community) are all endearing as Selleck’s beleaguered employees, while Craig T. Robinson makes a perfect ringer playing a defiant disc jockey in charge of music for the three-day sellathon. By contrast, Helms plays the smug Paxton as a variation of Andy Bernard, his character on The Office, while Riggle xeroxes Steve Carrell’s turn in Anchorman to play the childish Steve Selleck. Those Daily Show alumni do know how to play it safe.

Which is not to say this film called for anything too inventive, anyway. Its low ambitions are served well enough, and it’s entertaining while you watch it, containing at least a half-dozen quotes you’ll want to share with friends. In our review of the thearical release we had predicted an unrated-version coming to home video quickly. That’s not the case, though why the studio chose not to exploit Helms’ success with The Hangover in promoting this release is anyone’s guess. The Goods deserves better, if not much, than the reception it got from the public. Next stop for, we fear: endless, bowdlerized reruns on Comedy Central, basic cable’s version of a used car lot.

- Michael Kabel
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Miscellaneous Debris, October 2009 Edition

A big, unorganized roundup of news and items we didn’t feel deserved a full blog post.

Well, so much for October. Here comes November right on its heels as always, the month with bitter cold, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and the beginning of the Christmas season. October wasn’t much of a month for film, unless you’re a horror fan, in which case you got yet another part of the seemingly endless Saw franchise. You mabe even participated in the Paranormal Activity phenomenon/marketing blitz.

We spent a good part of the month not trekking through the chilly rain to see whatever else was in the theatres, but instead stayed home and watched film noirs and some classic 70s cinema. What follows below is stuff from the outside world that caught our diminished attention, assembled in no particular order of importance.

1. If you’re one of the thousands of visitors this month who got here looking for our picture of Grace Park, welcome and please enjoy the rest of our articles. We hope you stuck around and didn’t just right click and run, but read our whole piece about casting the long-in-Development-Hell Flash movie. We’ll have a comparable article for the far-more-definite Green Lantern project published right here later in November. You should also check out our mission statement, located on the task before just this entry.

2. A few idle thoughts about how Mad Men might end its third season. Last season Don Draper’s (John Hamm) nemesis Duck Phillips (Mark Moses) left the company in a snit after learning Draper had no contract at Sterling Cooper. This season Phillips has joined an aggressive rival agency apparently eager to expand its work force. With Sterling Cooper up for sale by its British parents, Draper could find himself working for Phillips once again if Phillips’ new agency buys his old one out. The difference is that this time Draper would find himself hemmed in by the contract boss Bert Cooper (Robert Morse) blackmailed him into signing. The walls are closing in on Don from all sides, and we can’t wait to see how this freight train of a season reaches its conclusion.

3. Warner Brothers used to release their Film Noir Classic Collection box sets once a year, giving fans of America’s most hallowed film genre a fresh crop of famous and not-so-famous crime and detective movies to pore over. They stopped that last year, though, with Chapter4 in the series containing relatively obscure gems like Act of Violence and Crime Wave, and the long-awaited cult favorite Decoy. But there are lots of other noir favorites to bring to the DVD format, including works by some of the era’s biggest directors and actors. Who do we beg, nag, or offer to bribe for a fifth volume in the series? And on that subject, is Fox no longer releasing titles under its “Fox Film Noir” imprint?

Watch this show.

4. Are you one of the hundreds of Americans watching NBC this season? The troubled network sees the ratings of its much-trumpeted The Jay Leno Show continue to erode, while once-mighty ratings earners Heroes and Law & Order circle the drain. Actually, the ratings attrition of Heroes has been going on for years, but it seems now the network may be ready to wrap things up with a finale to air next spring. Meanwhile the promising hour-long drama Trauma, which would’ve stood a fair chance in one of the 10 PM berths currently monopolized by the Leno show, won’t get its full season order.

5. While we’re on the subject, the network’s freshman comedy Community continues to get better and better as it finds its comic momentum, turning out one inspired episode after another even while its ratings remain wanting. The pilot was a bit stiff, admittedly hurting its first impressions, but subsequent episodes have focused on what works (the comic chemistry between stars Joel McHale and Chevy Chase; Yvette Nicole Brown’s irresistable charm) and downplayed what doesn’t. It’s TV you can’t wait to quote to your friends the next day, espcially just about anything that comes out of Spanish instructor Senor Chang’s (Ken Jeong) mouth.

6. Why is Hollywood only now making sequels to films that Gen X’ers loved in college? Both Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans have releases just around the corner, even though expectations for either one haven’t exactly set the world afire. Actually, director Warner Herzog swears his Bad Lieutenant isn’t a remake or sequel to Abel Ferrara’s notorious 1992 neo-noir, but the comparisons are inevitable and probably at least a little bit deserved. We want to get excited about the new Bad Lieutanant, though we’re skeptical about Nicolas Cage tackling the fine subtleties of New Orleans life and culture. (Remember his last attempt at filmmaking in the Crescent City? Most people don’t.)

7. Also something presumably for Generation X members, the first official cast photo from the upcoming A-Team movie was released earlier this week. That’s Bradley Cooper (The Hangover) as Face, UFC star Rampage Jackson as B.A. Baracus, Sharlto Copley (District 9) as Howling Mad Murdock, and the great Liam Neeson as Hannibal Smith. Jessica Biel and Omari Hardwick (Deep Blue) also star.

We’d be less enthused about this, yet another 80s show getting the movie treatment, if not for Joe Carnahan’s place in the director’s seat. The original series was impossible to take completely seriously, much like Carnahan’s own bullet fest Smokin’ Aces. So much like its inspiration, we can likely enjoy the A-Team movie best if we don’t expect too much from it.

8. Ridley Scott says he says he wants to make a prequel to Alien, setting its story a full thirty years before the events of the classic 1979 original, which he also directed. That’s fine and all, but we can’t help but think it’s going to push back his adaptation of Joe Haldeman’s brilliant science fiction novel The Forever War, which he announced about a year ago.

We’d bet anything that there’s more story potential in Haldeman’s tale of soldiers fighting the same space war over millenia than there is in going to the Alien well a seventh time. The novel is a long time coming to film – Scott himself said he waited 25 years to get the rights – and its many, many admirers deserve to see a director of Scott’s caliber handle the project. So here’s hoping.

9. Finally, the trailer below previews the new comedy Pirate Radio, based on the true story of the outlaw radio station that broadcast off the coast of England in the 1960s. Retitled from its earlier international release name The Boat That Rocked, the film’s had a troubled production history, including many edits to trim it down from an original three-hour runtime. Just the same, we remain optimistic if only for the presence of Bill Nighy, an actor so versatile and charming he could probably sell sand in the desert.

Pirate Radio opens nationwisde November 13.

- Michael Kabel

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Review: The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

Raunchy used-car comedy isn’t a classic, but it’s not a clunker either.

When we previewed this movie a few weeks ago, we talked a lot about how The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard might – if it was good enough - become more than an end-of-summer diversion, how it might make itself a touchstone for America circa 2009, when the car industry and local dealers nationwide are literally begging for customers. Though the film never quite reaches that level of relevance, first-time director Neal Brennan and second-time screenwriters Andy Stock and Rick Stempson manage to create a reference point for something else: the archetypal adult comedy of the late 00′s. Because of that, and sometimes despite it, the film is often riotously funny.

Like Talladega Nights and seemingly dozens of other Will Ferrell movies (Ferrell and frequent collaborator Adam McKay co-produced), The Goods puts an alpha dog personality in a working-class situation for trashy comic effect, relying on a barrage of potty language, sexual innuendo and slapstick violence to crowd-surf the audience from one gag to the next. Thrown in for good measures: a cast of misfits, some lovable but most weird; an improbably warm-hearted romantic interest; and a shaggy plot hinging on either family or personal honor. In fact, the film doggedly follows that blueprint, moving its characters from one gag or situation to the next while barely slowing down to establish context or meaning to the jokes. You laugh a lot while it’s happening, even as you’re aware the film could be doing better.

The saving grace is that most of the jokes are funny – sometimes very funny, with at least three extended gags that detonate with explosive comic payoff.  ”Used car mercenary” Don Ready (Jeremy Piven) and his team of high-pressure sales experts are hired by failing Temecula, California car patriarch Ben Selleck (James Brolin) to get rid of 200 cars over the Fourth of July weekend. Because the process of inventory liquidation only has so much comic potential, the script comes fully loaded with character baggage: Ready is haunted by a previous failure that ended in the death of his best friend. His teammates are bizarrely distracted by various sex-charged problems: oversexed  Babs (Kathryn Hahn) lusts after Selleck’s man-child son (Rob Riggle); sensitive Jibby (Ving Rhames) longs to “make love” to a woman (as opposed to just having sex); financial wizard Brent (David Koechner) finds himself the reluctant object of Selleck’s homosexual advances.

Ready himself woos Selleck’s daughter Ivy (Jordana Spiro), despite her engagement to weaselly import car salesman/boy-band vocalist Paxton (Ed Helms). The film knows – and we know it knows – that the two are going to end up together, and their courtship has a going-through-the-motions quality despite Spiro’s effortless charm. Ready also finds a potential son in Selleck’s youngest employee Blake (Jonathan Sadowski), a junior salesman with all of his signature moves. While the setup offers numeous character and gag possibilities, the film never really gets the story thread moving. As with the other plotlines, it’s one more thing in the circus of the film’s action.

But despite all the characters and the bevy of jokes the film still sometimes manages to lose its momentum, especially during a plot twist late in the second act that feels forced to the point of snapping. Amplifying this problem is another issue, one of comic pitch: rather than lose additional time by going for depth, director Brennan chooses instead to make the movie louder, ever louder. When Ready has his most sincere moment, it’s at the top of his lungs; characters incessantly shout at one another. Such zeal works in skit comedy, but repetitive scenes in a 90 minute film drag on the audience’s patience, raising the bar for the next gag to regain the comic momentum.

Piven charges Ready’s character with sleazy confidence, probably the only way to play such a outsized-by-design personality. Yet he sometimes stumbles giving Ready vulnerability or warmth. Hahn, Rhames and Koechner all make the most of their parts, each of which comes down to a single character point: the horny one, the sweet one, the smart one. Charles Napier, Tony Hale, and Ken Jeong are all endearing as Selleck’s beleaguered employees, while Craig T. Robinson steals his scenes as a defiant disc jockey in charge of music for the three-day sellathon. By contrast, Helms plays the smug Paxton as a variation of Andy Bernard, his character on The Office, while Riggle xeroxes Steve Carrell’s turn in Anchorman to play the childish Steve Selleck.

Ultimately, reviewing the theatrical release seems an almost academic exercise, given the inevitable unrated DVD version that’s sure to arrive mere months from now. The Goods is that kind of film, and when watching this current iteration you can often pinpoint which edits trimmed additional material from various scenes. That’s not entirely a bad thing. Like Anchorman with its companion movie and the “unbearably long, self-indulgent director’s cut” of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, an enlarged Goods is probably a better film all the way around, with greater character development and more patience at developing its setups. Which is not to say you should wait for the rental so much as consider this release a demo for the souped-up version still to come. America has a love affair with cars and movies both, and unrated editions and director’s cuts have become just next year’s model of the same make. Still, this version of The Goods is good enough to deserve seeing now.

- Michael Kabel

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Preview: The Invention of Lying

Ricky Gervais leads a sprawling ensemble cast in a high-concept comedy about truth.

We couldn't find an image of the actual poster. Honestly.

Imagine a world where no one ever lies and where everyone is always completely candid and trusting, until one man learns to use the power of bullshitting for his own gain. That’s the setup for Ricky Gervais’ (Ghost Town) September-released farce, which looks to be the kind of sprawling, high-concept piece that Woody Allen could have made in the 1970s and Garry Shandling might have tried a decade ago. Though Gervais (who also co-directs and co-wrote the script with Matthew Robinson) is probably capable of making more of the premise than most other actors, he’s got great backup in a huge ensemble supporting cast that includes at least one legend and a platoon of  hip co-stars.

Gervais plays Mark, a film executive in a world so completely honest that its culture doesn’t even include fiction: performers simply tell true stories based on facts from history. With his career bottoming out and a romance with the object of his affection Jennifer (Jennifer Garner) going nowhere fast, he has a brainstorm: lie about how much money he wants to withdraw from a bank. The teller believes him (apparently it’s also a world without ATM’s), and his lying career is off and running. The film goes on to show the consequences of bearing false witness and, we imagine, the redemptive power of honesty.

Probably the first film that comes to mind here, at least after watching the pretty standard trailer, is 1997′s Liar, Liar. The twist is that instead of Jim Carrey only telling the truth, the plot has one guy telling lies while everyone around him is utterly forthcoming. Gervais’ previous film, last year’s Ghost Town, was about a hapless schmoe given the unwanted gift of communication with dead people. That film eventually sank into the usual Hollywood cliches but was buoyed by Gervais’ and co-star Greg Kinnear’s impossible-to-dislike screen presences. Likewise, there’s little to suggest this film is going to be anything too unpredictable: Gervais-as-movie star remains an emerging marketable brand for audience over 35, as do co-stars Garner, Jason Bateman, and Tina Fey.

Joining them are Rob Lowe as Mark’s nemesis and Louis CK as his buddy, while Christopher Guest, Patrick Stewart and Jeffrey Tambor all show up in various roles, too. That sounds promising enough, but big ensemble groups rarely pay off for comedy: Shandling’s Town & Country (2001) had a colossal amount of talent but ended up the biggest money-loser in motion picture history, a failure caused somewhat by its inability to meet expectations. Yet that comparison is probably unfair. While The Invention of Lying doesn’t share that earlier film’s production problems and budget overruns, it also lacks its pedigree.

Ultimately, it’s somewhat hip to like Gervais, and the film will find an audience among its target demographic while possibly luring a few college kids thanks to the inclusion of Jonah Hill (Superbad). Which is probably all it wants: to find a nice corner of the multiplex and settle in for a pleasant enough and profitable run. Its working title was The Other Side of Truth, but may we suggest Universal Pictures follow the example of its premise and rename the film Adult Ensemble High Concept Comedy for Autumn 2009? Truth in advertising, and all that.

The Invention of Lying opens nationwide September 25th.

- Michael Kabel

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Goodbye to Life, Life On Mars, The Unusuals

A last look back at three recent television series cancelled before their time.

As the 2008-2009 television series ends with a whimper, it’s hard not to feel a sense of relief spiked nevertheless with frustration. For months we’d followed the efforts of three very good shows to find their audience, hit their creative strides, and sometimes to accomplish both at the same time. Even as formerly reliable and exciting shows collapsed around themselves – most notably NBC’s The Office and Heroes – the lesser known weeklies Life, Life On Mars, and the late season replacement The Unusuals foundered beneath increasingly merciless ratings thresholds.

All three shows had promise, all three sometimes fell short of their potential, and each one offered something more intelligent and ambitious than the sludge pool of reality-TV and cop procedurals that still lay, like a wet tarpaulin, over most of the network playing field. Like CBS’s Swingtown, which misses inclusion in the group only by virtue of its summertime airdates, they all deserved longer and better fates.

Of the three, only Life survived past its inaugural season, airing eleven episodes before the 2007-2008 writer’s strike. The intricate, melancholy story of police detective Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis, Band of Brothers), returning to the LAPD after serving twelve years in prison for a gruesome double homicide he didn’t commit, the show used veracious documentary-style interviews with its supporting characters to paint a sketchy, emerging back story of conspiracy and paranoia. Surrounding Crews were his recovering addict partner Danni Reese (The L Word‘s Sarah Shahi), skeptical police lieutenant Karen Davis (Robin Weigert, Deadwood), and cellmate-turned-housemate Ted Earley (the terrific Adam Arkin, Chicago Hope). The conspiracy subplot gave an X-Files-like dread to each episode that intrigued without remaining deliberately opaque, so that each revelation begged for more information without necessitating it.

The Season 2 cast of Life.

NBC, in what must be the cruelest act of generosity in recent memory, renewed the ratings-challenged show for a second season but scheduled it during the Friday night wasteland. The show correspondingly took a tremendous dip in quality, downplaying Crews’  Zen ethos, the conspiracy side story, and Crews’ illicit love affair with his attorney (Brooke Langdon, Melrose Place) in favor of a far blander romance with his married ex-wife. The episode scripts languished, too, often involving more gimmick than substance and sex appeal over innovation or suspense. Four episodes into its second chance, the show teetered on the verge of becoming yet another network crime show, indistinguishable from the rest.

Worn down by Life: Lewis

A scheduling shift to Wednesdays brought a return to quality but didn’t significantly help ratings, even as the characters grew and the cast settled into working with one another. Donal Logue’s (The Tao of Steve) Captain Brian Tidwell, replacing Weigert as boss, was a charming romantic interest for Reese, while the show amplified first-season antagonist Roman Nevikov (Garret Dillahunt, No Country For Old Men) into the hub of the resurgent conspiracy backstory. A second-season finale brought satisfactory, if rushed, conclusions to its major storylines without taking narrative shortcuts. As a result the show has a definite beginning, middle, and (premature) end. Ultimately, the show makes ideal fare for marathons on DVD or on NBC’s undernourished Sleuth cable network.

In retrospect, considering its pedigree, film-worthy ensemble cast and mind-blowing premise, ABC’s remake of the BBC series Life On Mars should probably have hit the ground running as a better show than it ever actually became. Struck by a car in 2008, NYPD detective Sam Tyler (Jason O’Mara, In Justice) awakes in 1973 to find himself a just-transferred detective assigned to the crumbling 125th precinct, a sweaty fiefdom of crime and corruption dominated by bitter, lupine Lieutenant Gene Hunt (Harvey Keitel) and his overbearing henchman Ray Carling (Michael Imperioli, Goodfellas). Tyler found solace in the friendship of fledgling policewoman Annie Norris (Gretchen Mol, 3:10 to Yuma) while trying to determine if he was dead, comatose, or actually a time traveler.

The Life On Mars cast

Early episodes excelled thanks to the strong chemistry of the various cast members and plot points that were hard not to envy: the chance to meet one’s parents, to see oneself in early childhood, to capitalize on knowledge of the future. Unfortunately, it also went to the well of stranger-in-a-strange land pop culture references too often and sometimes didn’t carry its plots through to their conclusion. An early episode revealing corruption among Hunt and his cronies was dropped too soon, and a storyline involving the criminal activities of Tyler’s father (Dean Winters, Rescue Me) never got the attention it demanded.

Feathered, leathered: Mol and O'Mara

Ultimately, Life On Mars may never have been too much of one thing or another to draw in fans of science-fiction television or the cop procedural audience, both of which typically have very defined sets of expectations and demands. Underachieving in its Thursday night time slot, ABC moved the program to Wednesdays after Lost. The show dramatically matured in quality as the season went on, though, and episodes including a hospital hostage standoff and the death of a newspaper reporter who may have been a fellow time traveler were both series standouts.

The film is a saddening bore: the LOM finale

ABC cancelled the series well enough in advance to allow the show’s creators to give it a conclusion, and while their solution wasn’t very good it was nevertheless memorable. Departing wildly from the British series’ melancholy resolution, Tyler awakes to find he’s an astronaut en route to the planet Mars itself, and that his time in the 70s was a malfunctioning virtual reality dream during his suspended animation. A bold and clumsy middle finger held up to the show’s small but devoted audience, it’s a case study in the dangers of television done not well but quickly.

Finally, while no official notice of its cancellation shows up on search engine queries, its ratings and expert speculation alike suggest that ABC’s The Unusuals won’t survive past its original ten episode order. A dark serio-comedy that proudly held M*A*S*H as a primary influence that applied that show’s light on top/dark beneath texture to a seemingly normal “cops on the beat procedural,” often to stunning effect. Critics didn’t get it, and with a late-season starting date the show still hasn’t found its audience.

The cast of The Unusuals

It’s hard not to think of The Unusuals as the best cable drama on network television. The dark subject matter and characterizations – Detective Eric Delahoy (Adam Goldberg, The Hebrew Hammer) lives in denial of his brain tumor diagnosis, while his partner Leo Banks (Harold Perrineau, Lost) suffers a constant fear of death at any minute – takes a certain mindset to quickly embrace. Likewise its plots, which included a “zombie” hospice patient walking across New York to the site of his childhood home or the “crime slut” who romanced men to help her commit brutal robberies.

The show worked best based on the strengths of its ensemble cast, including neophyte detective Amber Tamblyn (Joan of Aracadia) as neophyte detective Casey Shraeger and Jeremy Renner (28 Weeks Later) as disgraced baseball player Jason Walsh, her possibly-corrupt partner. As good as they, Perrineau, and Goldberg were, the show was finding its standout in Kai Lennox (Yes Man) as Detective Eddie Alvarez. The spiritual descendant of M*A*S*H‘s Major Frank Burns but hobbled by such low self-esteem that he only speaks of himself in the third person, the multilingual Alvarez was the wet blanket to all the strangeness surrounding the group’s Second Precinct, even as Renner’s detective was its brains and Goldberg and Perrineau its sadsack heart.

As with Life On Mars, from which it inhabited the post-Lost death slot, The Unusuals may not have been one-thing-or-another-enough to find its audience. Saddled with a series title that could win a MacArthur grant for blandness, audiences likely couldn’t figure out what it was about or why it was different. Too, there’s something to be said for the twilight of cop shows theory predicted for some time now, as years of Law & Order‘s and CSI‘s have worn out the public’s welcome or nailed down their time slots past the point of usurpation. Or possibly the public reflexively looks to cable for offbeat fare now – USA regularly mines quirk for most of its original programming, and AMC’s Breaking Bad is one of the best shows anywhere on the dial. So The Unusuals, like the other two shows fading into DVD releases and likely cable network spotlights, was possibly just too unusual for where it found itself.

- Michael Kabel
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Review: I Love You, Man

The effortless charisma of a powerhouse cast can’t redeem an underdeveloped script.

The big question surrounding I Love You, Man as a  film is a dilemma no one ever wants to ask themselves in a romantic relationship: if you lower your expectations, or if you don’t ask for too much, is it okay when all is said and done to not feel too terribly disappointed? Long on setup but middling on ambition and payoff alike, it’s a mildly underachieving film with a few laughs and no sense of having wasted time when leaving the movie theatre. That will likely be enough to satisfy most casual viewers, and indeed it’s a film that’s almost impossible to take seriously. It does skirt around and run from some interesting questions, however, questions that deserve more attention than given.

Paul Rudd (Role Models), an affable comic presence if any exists in film right now, plays newly engaged real estate agent Peter Klaven, a man so comfortable around other women that he’s never felt the need, outside of a few acquaintances at his fencing club, to forge camaraderie with other men. When he overhears his fiance Zooey (The Office‘s Rashida Jones) complaining at a girl’s night party that his lack of male friendship might cause problems in their upcoming marriage, Peter resolves to find a new male friend. His gay brother (Andy Samberg) sets him up on man-dates – social, non-romantic events that aren’t meant to lead to anything sexual. This being a comedy made in early 21st Century America, of course the man-dates are disastrous.

Modern day warriors: Rudd, Segel

His luck changes when he happens up on Sidney Fife (Jason Segel), a laid-back investments counselor with plenty of masculine energy. “You seemed like a good dude,” Fife tells Klaven at the end of their first man-date, providing the bulk of explanation in what the eccentric Fife would see in the nebbishy, vaguely effeminate Klaven. The two hang out in Fife’s man-cave jamming to Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” or drinking beer, or walking up and down the Venice Beach boardwalk. Klaven’s growing self-confidence – and lack of time to spend helping Zooey plan their wedding – leads to tension between between his love and his new best bud. A third act of awkward misunderstandings and sorrowful longing ensues.

Odd couple: Jones, Rudd

Despite it’s fashionable “bromantic” twist, there’s little about co-writer/director John Hamburg’s (Along Came Polly) script (written with Dr. Doolittlescribe Larry Levin) that doesn’t feel painstakingly formulaic. All the elements of modern middlebrow-hip comedy are on ready display: there’s a gag about bodily functions, in this case vomit. There’s the post-ironic fetishizing of a classic rock band, in this case Rush. A faded celebrity from twenty to thirty years ago appears as himself (Lou Ferigno). Every character, no matter their age or education, swears like a sailor jailed on shore leave. As for the plot, it’s possible that Hamburg et al. are co-opting every plot contrivance and shopworn gimmick of traditional romantic comedies as  a means of subversively poking fun at the romcom genre. If only anything else about the film were so clever such a idea might become at least a little credible.

Mean Girls: Pressly, Jones, Burns

Perhaps the most annoying aspect, one that would be troubling in a drama, is the superficiality of the script’s attitudes towards both sexes. Men are childlike, buffoonish, and desperate for company from either sex. Women are shrill, judgmental, and as often as not mean-spirited. That’s probably true at times, but not to the simplistic extremes presented here. I Love You, Man, like dozens of other romantic comedies, moves on a straight line despite its characters or their relations to one another. If women have to be sanctimonious and men cretinous to get each scene’s point across, well then that’s what’s necessary. It doesn’t help that Zooey’s best friends are sitcommish cliches: Denise (Jamie Pressly) is a shrill smartass in a nasty marriage; Hailey (Sarah Burns) is so pathetically lonely she tells guys about her wedding plans five minutes after meeting them.

The cast raises the script as far as they can, though, and their innate likeability raises the film several notches. Rudd doesn’t push the envelope of his acting repertoire, which means he’s charming and funny and earnest. Segel, a little more ambitious in playing the zen slacker Sidney, seems to struggle with finding his character’s basis; you can see him reaching for something in several scenes. As for the supporting cast, it’s a shame Jones isn’t given more to do except smile or frown according to the situation. J.K. Simmons and Jane Curtain show up to play Peter’s parents, and Samberg is miscast as his brother. Pressly could teach a graduate seminar in playing snarling sexpots, but her scenes with Jon Favreau (the only one here playing against type as her dickish husband), in which the two negotiate sex in exchange for favors (“You’re wearing a cheerleader outfit tonight if I do this.”) provide some of the film’s most quotable dialogue.

If I Love  You, Manwere a better film it might raise questions about masculine idea in the  post-Sexual Revolution, post-metrosexual landscape. In a culture filled with the idea of men as pets (the docile milquetoasts of Generation Y) and romantic masculinity as a fantasy notion (Twilight) there’s a lot of ground to cover on what being a man actually entails. God knows there’s more to it than gets presented here. A light comedy isn’t the place for a referendum on gender identity, but in bringing the subject up it seems that the film ought to provide at least a theory. Failing that, more laughs than it does.

- Michael Kabel
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