Now that my jet lag is mostly gone, I can write coherently about the entertainment choices on my fifteen-hour flight from Vancouver to Sydney — what little choice there was.
Having watched Coraline (marvellous!) on the flight over and having exhausted all the non-annoying television options, as well as too bleary-eyed to read with only two hours left on the flight, I turned to cheesy Hollywood comedy.
My choices were 17 Again (and how weird is it to have someone my age being the old one in a film like this?), He’s Just Not That Into You (not touching that), and I Love You, Man.
At least I Love You, Man has Paul Rudd and Rashida Jones.
Oddly enough, it turned out to be a smart, thoughtful movie. Yeah, I know. I wonder how it ever got funded, too.
Peter is a guy whose friends have always been women, even as a child, and he doesn’t really think about it until he realizes he has no male friends to stand up with him at his wedding.
No one ever suggests one of his female friends, but he doesn’t seem to have many of them, either. He has a fiancee and a lot of acquaintances, but no real friends. This is a guy who just doesn’t connect with many people, and he realizes he’s missing out on something that most other people have.
So he goes hunting for a guy friend. You’d think this would be the point where it would all go horribly wrong, but it doesn’t. His fiancĂ©e, Zooey, thinks it’s a great idea and is wholly supportive of him, even when one of his dates kisses him goodnight.
Did I mention the astounding absence of homophobia in this film? I can think of one instance involving a very minor character we’re meant to dislike.
In fact, Zooey supports him every way she can. The inciting incident, when Peter notices he has no guy friends, happens when he overhears Zooey and her friends talking about him. The friends gently (lovingly, I’d say) mock him for it and Zooey defends him. I think it’s important to distinguish that she defends him, not herself or her choice of him; nothing her friends do or say in this film make her doubt her choice. The only thing that does that is Peter himself later on.
The characters, with the exception of a few broadly-drawn stereotypes, are all rational, likeable adults who make thoughtful decisions, recognize their mistakes, and seek to change themselves for the better. The (deliberate, I’m sure) stereotypes, on the other hand, serve to emphasize how complex and real the other characters are. The main characters are people, not archetypes. They all have faults, they’re all a little selfish and self-centred, but in the way your own friends are, not in the way most movie characters are. They love and respect and support each other even when they act like asses.
The comedy comes from the characters’ wit and the reversal of genre tropes, not from humiliation and stupidity. It’s refreshing and well worth watching at least once.





