Director: John Hamburg
Writers: John Hamburg, Larry Levin
Photography: Lawrence Sher
Music: Theodore Shapiro
Editor: William Kerr
Cast: Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, Rashida Jones, Jaime Pressly, Sarah Burns, Jane Curtin, Andy Samberg, J.K. Simmons, Jon Favreau, Rob Huebel, Aziz Ansari, Nick Kroll, Mather Zickel, Thomas Lennon, Lou Ferrigno, Rush
As much as I enjoy laughter, I'm not particularly versed in latter-day American film comedy. I think this one may fall loosely under the "Apatow" label. Director / screenwriter John Hamburg is more closely associated with the Ben Stiller industrial complex, with writing credits on all three Fockers travesties, Zoolander, and Along Came Polly (the last of which he also directed, and the only one I've seen that I liked even approximately). Stiller himself goes way back with Apatow, but more than anything I think it's the familiar faces of Paul Rudd and Jason Segel that is giving me the impression. They are in many of these things, along with the omnipresence of that congenial try-anything gross-out aesthetic that permeates this.
I liked this movie when it came out and then I forgot about it, but seeing it again recently I was surprised by now much closer to classic romantic comedy it is than the usual straight-up broad bids for bigg laffs. Indeed, it is actually quite faithful to the formula, except the formula has been turned cockeyed. The couple that marries at the end, Peter Klaven and Zooey Rice (Rudd and Rashida Jones), are basically OK all through. It's finding Peter a best friend so he can have a best man at the wedding that's more the problem, and therein lie all the familiar "meet / break up / make up" dynamics of the rom-com.
The basic laugh strategy here is a stunt reminiscent of one Tina Fey pulled for 30 Rock in which she gave her character Liz Lemon one of the most amazingly well-adjusted and happy families ever encountered anywhere in popular culture. Everyone here (except Jon Favreau) does not have just a good heart, they have glowing, golden hearts. That is one of the picture's greatest charms. They are all naturally and convincingly playing variations on Ned "Okely Dokely" Flanders from The Simpsons. The fresh-faced Rudd as a Los Angeles real estate agent is already a good match for this with his gentle easygoing manner, but he takes it up a notch. He's good at playing a nice guy who's not very funny, but never stops trying to be funny, and somehow becomes very funny because of that. "Play a U2 record while you're there," he tells a group of his pals who are heading out for a weekend camping trip at Joshua Tree. That's about the level of all his jokes, and they are constant.
I also like a movie that is confident enough about its players to delay introducing them until it's right for the story. Rudd virtually carries this by himself for the first 20 minutes, and then Segel comes along as the would-be best friend and best man Sydney Fife (these names! both of "Peter" Klaven's significant others', Zooey and Sydney, are gender-ambiguous), at which point the whole thing takes off. I'm not sure it's right to say Rudd and Segel have chemistry, but I suppose it's close enough. They are more like train wrecks on parallel tracks. Whatever it is it commands the screen. They are funny—there's clearly a lot of improv built into these scenes (and/or scenes built out of the improv)—but the screenplay is good too.
The intimacy sought for here necessarily, of course, finds its most profound elements in side-by-side dynamics, as opposed to the face-to-face kind normally animating a rom-com. Peter and Sydney hang out, shoot the shit, get fish tacos. They talk about girls. They talk about sex. They banter back and forth with rhythmic nonsense phrases. They give one another nicknames. Sydney calls Peter "Pistol Pete" and Peter calls Sydney "Joban" and "Siddy Slicker," both of which fall flat of course. Peter's just no good at jokes. Eventually, perhaps inevitably, perhaps even predictably, they bond over jamming to the music of Rush. That's good for some laughs and a few plot developments on the way to the wedding.
Rudd and Segel are fine but there's also a great supporting cast here, starting with the surprise of a glowering, overweight Jon Favreau as Barry, the asshole husband of one of Zooey's best friends. He stalks around and feels continually about to explode with rage or heart failure. Barry has a dorky raw sexuality and a "smokin' hot wife," as Sydney puts it (Denise, played by Jaime Pressly). The lives of Barry and Denise are endless rounds of fights and make-up sex. "Well, if I do this, we have sex with the lights on when you get home," Barry mutters to her, conceding a point in a fight. "Just like in Jamaica ... All night long." "Fine, whatever," she snaps.
Peter frames the whole picture early when he goes to his brother Robbie for help finding a best man: "How do I meet friends? It's such a weird concept," he says. (One of the best jokes here is how no one ever thinks of Robbie for best man when he's so much the obvious choice.) There's an interesting tension created between the weird niceness parading about in front of us—Peter and Zooey are an absurd yet convincing ideal of a perfect relationship—and the ferocious pursuit of the gross-out set pieces packed in. The R rating "for pervasive language, including crude and sexual references," has it about right but misses the warmth. The contrast actually does work to make the constant swearing and the projectile vomiting, masturbation stations, and whatnot reasonably amusing. But I think the real pleasures of this are closer to the feel-good turns of the rom-com. It's likeable because the three principals played by Rudd, Segel, and Jones are likeable, and that really is enough, I think. The fact that it parodies the rom-com formula to the letter, with such skill, and that Rudd and Segel and so many other are so funny—those are the bonuses.
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