On one level, I Love You, Man is a funny movie that at the end of the day isn’t quite as hysterically funny as some other funny movies of recent years. But to dismiss it as mediocre, à la Ezra Klein, is to miss the important element of genre-play in the film.
Nobody discusses I Love You, Man without using the term “bromance.” And that’s the point. There’s no such genre as a bromance. The “buddy movie” is a genre—Lethal Weapon, etc.—but ILYM is not a buddy movie. It is, rather, a bromance, of which there is no such thing. What Ezra perceives as a lack of “tight” plotting and narratives arcs is, I think, an extension of the subversion. The film meets the minimum formulaic standards of a comedy in that it ends with a wedding and everyone is happy.
But it rips the guts out from the underlying optimism of the formula. None of the underlying tensions are resolved. Jason Segal has found no way out of his increasing isolation from his friends and peers, and Paul Rudd hasn’t discovered any real answer to the question of why he’s marrying Rashida Jones. Dad’s disavowal of favoritism between his sons is unconvincing. And yet all the underlying problems and lurking misery are completely consistent with a plot that counts as both “comedy” and “romance” in conventional terms.
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