We felt like a silly comedy this weekend and this one was an easy choice. Just to get the slight negative out of the way first, there were a few moments that dragged. We suspected they were improvised and could've been tighter. But perhaps the lags had more to do with the movie's celebration of awkwardness. Cringe comedy (The Office, Curb Your Enthusiasm, et al) was an acquired taste for me, but I have acquired it. Still, one cannot help but groan.
Jason Segel (TV's Freaks and Geeks, Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), Knocked Up (2007), more) and Paul Rudd (The Shape of Things (2003), The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005), Role Models (2008), Knocked Up, with his cell phone clipped to his belt, uncredited as John Lennon in Walk Hard (2007), and others) star here (perhaps competing with Steve Carell and Larry David for the Kings of Cringe).
Director John Hamburg, who co-wrote the screenplay, is no stranger to cringe comedy as he was one of the writers for Meet The Parents and Meet the Fockers, and the only writer listed (so far) for the three-quel, Little Fockers, set for release in 2011. Rudd played Peter, who had no male friends, and Segel was Sidney, who became his friend. Many of the laughs came from the turn-about of the "man-dates:" looking for friendship with fix-ups and arbitrary rules just like when looking for a love relationship.
Rashida Jones (The Office, 1 episode of Freaks and Geeks, among others), the daughter of producer/musician Quincy Jones and Peggy Lipton (TV's The Mod Squad 1968-73, and Twin Peaks 1990-91), was Peter's lovely, perplexed, yet understanding fiancée, Zooey. One could say this is a guy movie but I think I got all the jokes, even though I'm not a huge Rush fan (spoiler alert: you may want to wait til you have seen the movie before clicking on that last link). Andy Samberg (TV's Saturday Night Live since 2005) was cute as Peter's brother and Jon Favreau (Swingers (1996), Love & Sex (2000), Made (2001), Four Christmases (2008)) was hilarious as Barry, the bad-tempered husband of one of Zooey's best friends, Denise, played by the always-good Jaime Pressly (TV's My Name is Earl). However, because I could not always understand Favreau's words, I look forward to coming across this movie on cable to read the captions. Along with a bunch of fun cameos we enjoyed Jane Curtin (Saturday Night Live (1975-80) and TV's 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996-2001)) as Peter's mom and J.K. Simmons (Juno (2007) and Burn After Reading (2008)) as his dad.
Trivia: There a few other movies with commas in the title. When Jack & I discussed it, he commented that he always thought Bye Bye Birdie should have had a comma (that one didn't bug me) and perhaps a hyphen (his caring about punctuation and grammar is one of the many things I like about him). :)
No comments:
Post a Comment