Movie: “I Love You, Man”

Director: John Hamburg

Stars: Four and a half (out of five)

Tolkien deeply celebrated friendship when he had Samwise journey with the ringbearer all the way to Mount Doom. Even though “I Love You, Man” is a lightweight comedy, it seeks to celebrate that same type of hobbit friendship. It is a film that honors those friends who would jam with you to Rush’s “Tom Sawyer,” or would remember to be extra careful with your “Lost” season two DVDs, or who would even back you up in a fight against Lou Ferrigno if you unwisely chose to pick a fight with the star of “The Incredible Hulk.”

Paul Rudd stars as Peter Klaven, a sweet guy who knows how to deeply commit to his fiancée, Zooey (Rashida Jones). But when it comes to hanging out with men, he’s clueless. He doesn’t have any close male friends, but he has an enviable gift of being able to converse with women effortlessly.

For most guys it’s the other way around.

In order to find a best man for his wedding, he goes on a series of man-dates which fail, probably due to his excessive attempts to use phrases like “fo shizzle” and its various incarnations. But when he meets Sydney (Jason Segel), he finds a good enough friend who can forgive such dumb phrases and still want to hang out.

“I Love You, Man” is a “bro-mance;” a romantic comedy between heterosexual men. These types of movies used to be called “buddy comedies” but lately there has been a surge of buddy comedies that take the friendly relationships to the next level of intimacy, like “Superbad” or “Pineapple Express.”

Film critic James Berardinelli of Reelviews.net notes in his review of “Pineapple Express” that, “A lot of buddy films aren’t fundamentally that different from romantic comedies. The relationships are often developed in the same fashion, only with male bonding replacing sexual chemistry.”

The leads in “I Love You, Man” are straight, but that does not negate the strength of the intimacy that develops between these BFFs.

Rudd and Segel are a part of a troupe of actors that tend to appear in each other’s comedies, alternating between major and minor roles in films like “Knocked Up” and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” This film is not nearly as raunchy as their previous productions, but is it just as sweet. But unlike those films, “I Love You, Man” is much lighter in tone, probably due to the subject matter; it isn’t observing a complex ordeal like a pregnancy or a breakup, but rather, it observes a lighthearted friendship in its many funny nuances.

Even the title observes that most heterosexual men cannot affirm their love without adding a dude/bro/man. Guys, can you remember the last time you heard your best buddy give you the simplified “I love you” without including all sorts of colorful pronouns? I certainly can’t, and in all likelihood, neither could the filmmakers.