Release Date: March 20, 2009

(out of 4)

"I Love You, Man" is the real surprise of the season, a bawdy comedy that happens to be well-written beyond what is usually required for a buddy feature. One of the reasons it works so well is that the characters are distinguished by extreme differences yet seem believably relational to each other. Paul Rudd (“Role Models”) and Jason Segel (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall”) star as the two guys marked by two decidedly different mindsets. Rudd is square and uptight while Segel is hang-loose and impulsive. One buddy liberates the other in this anything goes boys will be boys comedy.

On an embankment overlooking the Los Angeles cityscape, Zooey (the irresistible Rashida Jones from season three of “The Office”) accepts a marriage proposal from our doofus borderline-metrosexual hero Peter Klaven (Rudd). On the drive home, Zooey uses her speaker phone to announce to her friends that she’s engaged (!) which begins an untamed dialogue about how obedient and generously selfless Peter is in the bedroom – with Peter in present earshot. The movie’s nerve is that Zooey, while cute and perky, is the dominant power in the relationship.

One of the problems is that Peter has always related more comfortably with female companions befitting of his non-threat and cutesy-sensitive demeanor. Peter primly tucks his shirt in, sticks to one alcoholic drink or less in social situations and steers away when a male co-worker sends him a porno email featuring a grandma on a saddle (“Oh my god, she’s a squirter!” his colleague bawls, the kind of off-color comment that repulses Peter). Director John Hamburg (“Along Came Polly”) has the sense not to explicitly display the email to the audience, it instead fills our imaginations.

Another über-feminine quirk in Peter is when he prepares a tray of root beer floats with pirouettes standing in for straws that he voluntarily presents to Zooey and all his girlfriends. Upon entering, Peter catches all the girls talking behind his back in regards to his absence of male buddies capped off with the mocking that he doesn’t have a Best Man to stand by him at the altar. This embarrasses Peter so bad that it from hereon launches the story that Peter needs to land a Best Man-caliber friend before his wedding in the forthcoming summer.

In this inspired awkward scenario, mom and girlfriends set Peter up with a series of man-dates to obtain a platonic friend for him. One of them is disastrous when it is mistaken for a real date (Peter has to gargle thoroughly upon his return home). Poker night is disastrous when he pisses everybody off after holding onto an off-suited 7-2 that results as a blunder-luck play, subsequently throwing up on the host after downing a beer. An attended soccer game with another would-be crony turns scary when a fight breaks out with all the fury of a demolition derby.

On his own, Peter meets the mentor-pal of his dreams in Sydney (Segel) at an open house property listing. Initial conversation is on safe playing ground for Peter when they discuss the classy nature of Panini sandwiches. Within two weeks, the two of them are hanging out full-time: surveying Los Angeles’ best fish tacos, garage band jamming, confiding in personal sexual preferences, and encouraging Peter to talk more like a man (“Why does everything I say sound like I’m a Leprechaun?” Peter utters self-deplorably in his forced attempts to be funny. Alas, he soon learns to act comfortably in his own skin and sling jokes like a real man). What started with Panini sandwiches leads to Sydney getting Peter to get in touch with his inner dirty boy.

Friendship between two men craving to act like boys is a rite and a right, and yet the tension of the movie is how it dissolves the intimacy between Peter and Zooey – trust is especially gaped when he takes Sydney’s advice too literally to open up and express feelings and concerns – the kind that are better left unsaid between a man and a woman (Don’t test your mate on why we are we together when you can’t answer it yourself). Plot detours that include sight gags on overly demographic-friendly billboards and an embarrassing party toast that disgraces sanctity, among dozens other scenes that score, the movie leads – following a few obligatory obstacles – to the big wedding but the movie stays right by remaining bright and keeping the comic tempo swift.

I am personally tired of movies with 15-minute wedding sequences especially the kind that involve detours with the bride having cold feet, or somebody losing the ring, or an arrival of a drunk minister spoiling the ceremony. What I like about this movie is that it wraps up in four or five minutes, and is hip and breezy in the process (there’s a cool hassle-free reception montage in the end credits). It doesn’t hammer us over the head with unfunny hold-ups like most wedding movies.

In simple summation, “I Love You, Man” makes you feel the joy in going to the movies again. It is perhaps the best comedy about last stand bachelorhood since “The 40-Year Old Virgin.” The movie also features chipper roles for J.K. Simmons and Jane Curtin as Peter’s parents, an exuberant turn by Andy Samberg as his brother, Thomas Lennon as Peter’s aggressively forward man-date, and Jaime Pressly and Sarah Burns as Zooey’s open-minded bridesmaids.