I Love You, Man

Editorial

Paul Rudd is comedy's bridesmaid, but never the bride. After soldiering too often in middling comedy limbo as the best friend or the brother-in-law, it's always good to see him play the lead, attractively and with expert timing.

Reunited with Forgetting Sarah Marshall writer-star Jason Segel, the duo make a very appealing team, Rudd unafraid to look cringe-makingly uncool, Segel laddishly brash and borderline oafish but irrepressibly likable. John Hamburg, who co-wrote Meet The Parents and Zoolander for Ben Stiller, is not quite the new Judd Apatow, as the hype suggests, but he knows what he's doing and does it neatly.

Rudd's open, trusting, considerate Peter gives real estate agents a good name. He's adored by all the women in the office but he has never been one of the guys, a difficulty demonstrated by an unfortunate evening when he's press-ganged into an unfriendly poker game with a memorably toe-curling result.

Egged on by his intended (Jones, a perky honey from the American version of The Office) and her gal-pals, he anxiously embarks on an excruciating series of set-up "man dates" with losers, loners and, inevitably, in a rendezvous of crossed wires and mixed signals, the hopeful gay guy who thinks Pete is looking for love.

Male get-togethers covering all the ground between yuck to yuk-yuk are the story's raison d'être: these range from Peter's advice-dispensing father and brother to Hulk icon Lou Ferrigno to Segel's hootsome Sydney Fife, a Rush devotee with a "man cave" that is every adolescent male's dream sanctuary.

So all good fun, but our advice for Peter is beware of marrying a woman who tells her girlfriends everything. It's cutely embarrassing at this stage of the game, but 10 years down the line, it's going to be so not funny, dude!

William Thomas