There is much to 'Love' in successful, bromantic comedy

                The premise of "I Love You, Man" is simultaneously extremely simple and very clever. Take decades of rom-coms (heck, centuries if you go back before film) where a guy/girl and his/her friend work together to get the love interest of his/her dreams. Then, switch around "friend" and "love interest." Suddenly, you have a whole new type of film and a rather enjoyable one at that. Where the Apatow crew (though Apatow himself is not attached to this project) has previously written stories of guy-love cloaked in other comedy genres (teen sex, romantic and drug), "I Love You, Man" finally tackles it with no pretenses.
    The movie begins as Peter (played by Paul Rudd) proposes to Zooey (Rashida Jones). She accepts and immediately calls her BFFs. Peter doesn't because, well, he has no BFFs. He gets along quite fine with the ladies (he's every girl's gay-best-friend-turned-straight), but not the fellas. After about 30 years of living sans-bromance, he realizes that maybe something is missing from his life.
    What follows in the first act are a series of terrible "first dates" as Peter tries to find the best friend of his dreams. "Guy-love" hilariously becomes so conflated that it would be great to re-watch this movie with a few gender studies professors. And yet, none of it seems forced. In fact, if anything, the awkward pauses on the "dates" and rejections during the "asking-outs" only go to show that there really is a fine line between wanting to be someone's friend and wanting to be their significant other. The movie is well aware that questions like "Do they like me that way? Am I cool enough? Do we have enough in common?" apply equally well to both situations.
    Finally, enter Sydney (Jason Segel). He's  the opposite of the upper-middle-class Peter, and yet their relationship works and not in that typical, cliché, "opposites-attract" way. The two have genuine chemistry. Their "flirtation" dispels any initial eye-rolling one might expect at the pairing.
    This is really the overall strength of the movie: Wherever you think it could stumble into a cliché, the actors and script manage to swerve away from that pitfall. Rudd works both as a straight man who is dealing with the madness around him and as the awkward-slang-dropping guy who just wants to be liked. Segel is simultaneously the guy we would all want as our best friend and who would scare us to death that he might ruin our lives.
    As for Jones, one might be hesitant about her character at first. Maybe it's difficult to not project her character, Karen, from "The Office" onto Zooey, but it seems as though the audience can see exactly where Zooey is going. She sort of goes there, but in a different, far more graceful way than predicted. The supporting characters all hit it out of the park, particularly Peter's brother and dad, who is played by the great J.K. Simmons.
    As for the script, again, there's a lot to love. John Hamburg really nails a lot of those scenes from life that we've all experienced but which we never think about. In a tux-shopping session, for example, Sydney obsesses over getting the right pose from Peter for a goofy photo. It later becomes a more important plot point, but at the moment, audiences can all smile and know they've had the friend who cares a bit too much about the results of a day out with the digital camera.
    Probably the strangest compliment this film earns is for its perfect use of the F-word. It doesn't use it too sparingly, but doesn't slather the script in it either. Every time it's used, it perfectly punctuates the scene.
    Sadly, "I Love You, Man" is not perfect. It does have its contrived bits. The character of Tevin, while amusing for the first few minutes, soon wears out his welcome and feels shoe-horned into the film for a portrait of the "bad-bro." Furthermore, the whole third-act conflict is forced and predictable. The film seems aware of its limits, however, and ultimately, not too much is made this conflict.
    Of course, these are ultimately minor complaints. The film is a strong two hours of enjoyment, and viewers will walk out feeling all warm and fuzzy, just wanting to hang out with their best friends.