I Love You, Man (2009) - Rudd, Segel and others achieve laughs aplenty in Hamburg's feel-good bromance

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The sweet mugs of the three endearing stars of John Hamburg's I Love You, Man sell the film all on their own

Peter is a middle-aged, engaged man, whose fiancée thinks it's a problem that he doesn't have any real friends of his own or a best man. This makes him seek out 'man-dates' for a friend and best man, until he meets the eccentric Sydney Fife, a cougar-chasing bachelor, who owns a 'man-cave'.

I Love You, Man is the 3rd feature from great New-Yorker co-writer-director John Hamburg (Along Came Polly (2004)), based on a script by Larry Levin (Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001)). Rashida Jones (Cuban Fury (2014)) as Peter's fiancée and her girlfriends are a bit taxing at first, (but it is purposeful), and the film has a vomiting scene with Jon Favreau (Chef (2014)) as the sprayed victim that is incredibly (overly) gross.
But you should disregard these minor drawbacks, because I Love You, Man is also perhaps 2009's funniest film: Paul Rudd (Knocked Up (2007)) and Jason Segel (New Jersey Turnpikes (1999)) as the two budding friends develop a relationship that involves much hilarity, and in particular Rudd is funnier and dopier here than he has ever been before.
I Love You, Man also has a substantial list of funny side characters (Thomas Lennon (Lethal Weapon (2017), TV-series) and Lou Ferrigno (Ping! (2000)) stand out) and is also commendable for its total acceptance of homosexuals, (Andy Samberg (Take the 10 (2017)) plays Peter's gay brother), which is just an added, extra quality of this feel-good comedy, which is a bit of a laugh riot and is also a love-letter to Los Angeles.

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 40 mil. $
Box office: 91.6 mil. $
= Minor flop
[I Love You, Man premiered 13 March (Austin, Texas' South by Southwest Film Festival) and runs 104 minutes. Hamburg based his script on Levin's which was a broader and less adult in tone and written 11 years before the film went into production. Shooting took place in California, almost entirely in Los Angeles, from April - May 2008. Rock band Rush appears in a live show performance in the film and were pleased with their inclusion in the film. The film opened #2, behind Knowing, to a 17.8 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed in the top 5 for another 2 weeks (#4; #5) and grossed 71.4 mil. $ (77.9 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 6.8 mil. $ (7.4 %) and Australia with 3.4 mil. $ (3.7 %). The film had a home video sale of more than 22 mil. $, which, if counted into the equation, would make it count as a box office success. I Love You, Man is certified fresh at 84 % with a critical average of 6.9/10 at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of I Love You, Man?

Our Idiot Brother (2011) - Rudd leads another very funny comedy

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+ Best Satire of the Year

Paul Rudd undeniably looks like a simpleton on the poster for Jesse Peretz's Our Idiot Brother

Our hero here is a hopelessly naive idiot, who gets incarcerated for having attempted to sell a small piece of hash to a cop. As he gets released, his girlfriend has dumped him and stolen his dog, so that he is forced to live in shifts with his family members.

Our Idiot Brother starts a bit uneasy, but it is worth staying with, (although one may first detect that it first and foremost is about awful people.) Because it really has quite a few hilarious scenes and a peculiar theme and point about how it's better to be a gullible idiot than an egotistical idiot.
Career men and women in the creative class and organic hippies get hauled over the coals by the film's satire, and it feels good. Paul Rudd's (I Love You, Man (2009)) lovability makes him feasible here despite his character's intense stupidity. Rashida Jones (A Very Murray Christmas (2015)) plays a hot lesbian; Kathryn Hahn (Bad Moms (2016)), Elizabeth Banks (Swept Away (2002)) and Zooey Deschanel (Elf (2003)) are pros as super-bitches; Emily Mortimer (Scream 3 (2000)) is funny as a frustrated housewife, and Steve Coogan (The Trip to Italy (2014)) is also a pro as a major a-hole.
The film is written by Evgenia Peretz (Theo who Lived (2016), producer) and David Schisgall (Theo who Lived (2016)) and directed by Jesse Peretz (Girls (2012-16)).

Related post:

2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 

Paul Rudd gives an interview about the movie here

Cost: 5 mil. $
Box office: 25.8 mil. $
= Big hit
[Our Idiot Brother premiered January 22 (Sundance) and runs 90 minutes. The film was developed fast and shot in New York in 30 days from July 2010 forward, obtaining a 30 % tax credit. The film opened #5 to a 7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it fell from the top 5 in its second week and grossed 24.8 mil. $ (96.1 % of the total gross). It was released in 10 other countries, with the 2nd and 3rd biggest markets being Italy with 338k $ (1.3 % ) and Germany with 157k $ (0.6 %). Our Idiot Brother is fresh at 68 % with a 6.2 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Our Idiot Brother?

The Muppets (2011) or, Man or Muppet?

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1 Time Film Excess Nominee:

Best Song: Man or Muppet, Brett McKenzie (lost to Albert Nobbs)


+ Best Musical of the Year

The festive, colorful poster for James Bobin's The Muppets

Walter is a muppet born in Smalltown, USA. Now he goes with his human brother and his girlfriend to Hollywood. But the muppet theater there is in the process of being overtaken by an evil oil baron!

Co-writer/star Jason Segel's (Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)) sympathetic heart-blood pumps through The Muppets, the first Muppets movie in 12 years, in which he partners up with equally endearing Amy Adams (Enchanted (2007)). Chris Cooper (August: Osage County (2013)) plays the rapping villain.
Muppets features lots of tongue-in-cheek humor and meta-comedy. It is warm like a cozy pillow with an excessive amount of cameos, - among them, Alan Arkin (Firewall (2006)) and Jack Black (Bernie (2011)) are funny, - and especially one very good musical number, the Oscar-winning Man or Muppet by Brett McKenzie (Flight of the Conchords (2007-09)).
The Muppets is nostalgic fun in a fairly unengaging, predictable plot. Segel co-wrote it with Nicholas Stoller (Gulliver's Travels (2010)), and James Bobin (Flight of the Conchords)) directed it.
Come together with the lovable muppets for a fun, enthusiastic, family-friendly party!

Related posts:
 
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess

Watch the infectious trailer for the movie here

Cost: 45 mil. $
Box office: 165.2 mil. $
= Big hit
[Muppets opened # 2 behind The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1. It became the highest-grossing Muppets movie ever, making 88.6 mil. $ in North America (54 % of the total gross). It got good reviews, many award-nominations and wins and a 2014 sequel that did less business, however. The Muppets also DVD/Bluray-debuted at #2 in the US, and made an additional 52.8 mil. $ from this.]

What do you think of The Muppets?

Cop Out (2010) or, A Couple of Dicks

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Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan are up for some sharp-shooting games in Kevin Smith's Cop Out

QUICK REVIEW:

An unlikely NYPD-partnership gets suspended after a scandalous street debacle, but they then get involved in another hairy situation with some Mexican thugs, as a valuable baseball card, which is to finance the older cop's daughter's marriage, gets stolen.

Tracy Morgan (Top Five (2014)) and Bruce Willis (Die Hard (1988)) have chemistry, and I laughed some to start out with. About 40 minutes into the film, (which is written by brothers Robb and Mark Cullen (Back in the Game (2013), TV-series)), a real, and pretty complicated, plot is attempted to be inserted into the preceding buddy cop tomfooleries, but the audience at that point has no interest in the rehash.
Cop Out has several scenes that are just plain stupid or dysfunctional, and the film grows tedious at some point, despite an atypical, cozy 80s-retro electro-hip-hop score, a throwback to the golden age for the relatively young buddy cop sub-genre, by Harold Faltermeyer (Beverly Hills Cop (1984)).
All in all, Cop Out is a pretty uncool film, clearly an uninvolved left-hand-job from director Kevin Smith (Tusk (2014)), who usually makes small, more or less personal indie flicks. - This was his first hired gig, which he didn't write himself, and it was obviously not a project he felt very enthusiastic about: He has stated that a reason for doing it was that it is the kind of movie his late father would have liked. During shooting, Smith was accused of being uninvolved and far away due to his marijuana-smoking while working. He, on the other hand, badmouthed Willis in a radio program after the production ... Smith was soon back with a much more relevant and dignified film, the great Red State (2011), which I recommend.

 Watch the trailer for the film, which puts it next to some modern classics and then reveals the low quality of Cop Out - ... as a way to get you to see it ... ?

Cost: 37 mil. $
Box office: 55.5 mil. $
= Flop
[Cop Out was first titled A Couple of Dicks, which didn't swing (he-he), then A Couple of Cops, (according to Willis, Cop Suckers was also in play ...), but then Smith thought Cop Out was fun, because it was what the title would be, (a cop out from something sexually suggestive.) You could say the whole film is a cop out. Especially the funny Morgan deserves better as a rising comedy star. The vulgarity was retained somewhat on the film's posters with the tagline ('Rock out with you Glock out'). Cop Out premiered #2 behind Shutter Island (2010) and made 44.8 mil. $ (81 % of its total gross) in the US.]

What do you think of Smith's Cop Out?
Other examples of original filmmakers stepping in it to get to that golden studio paycheck/recognition?