THE MOVIE

Paul Rudd and Rashida Jones in I Love You, Man.

I'm not homophobic, but when I first heard about this movie I, admittedly, avoided it thinking it was a gay romantic comedy. I was wrong. This movie is a great comedy (not saying that a gay comedy couldn't be great) about a man, Klaven (Paul Rudd), with no male friends who needs to find some to be the Best Man at his upcoming wedding. But when his insta-bond with his new B.F.F. puts a strain on his relationship with his fiancée, can the trio learn to live happily ever after?

Without a doubt the highlight in this movie is the performances and relationship formed between Paul Rudd's character Peter and Jason Segal's character Sydney who becomes Peter's best friend. This really is a movie about relationships, and in particular the way men form, or struggle to form, close bonds.

Having a chat outside...

Beyond the two male lead actors the supporting cast is also impressive an in particular Rashida Jones as Klaven's soon-to-be wife Zooey, J.K. Simmons as Klaven's father, Jaime Pressly as Zooey's friend Denise and Jon Favreau (yes, the director of a little movie known as Iron Man) as Denise's husband, and hater of Klaven, Barry.

If there is one thing I didn't like the movie it's that Paul Rudd plays his character a little too similar to Steve Carrell in many of his movies. I thought it during the movie, but when it finished, and without me saying anything two other people watching the movie with me said exactly the same thing. Still, we're not saying it's a bad performance at all.

In terms of the storyline, it's somewhat original and there are some rather amusing moments although it's not really a laugh out loud style movie - or at least it wasn't for us. There are some things though that just seemed slightly off with the movie. The way Sydney abuses people on the walkway, his speech at the dinner table. While I can see how they wanted the character to behave for the movie, we just can't really see someone like Klaven wanting to keep him as a best friend.

Isn't it nice being in love?

It's fair to say that this movie is not up there with recent 'classic' comedies such as 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up or Wedding Crashers but I Love You, Man remains a watchable comedy movie with solid performances across the board.

VIDEO
I Love You, Man was released in cinemas at 1.85:1 however this Blu-Ray release has been opened up to fill the 1.78:1 aspect ratio of your widescreen TV. Encoded using the AVC MPEG-4 codec the bitrate often sites above 30Mbps and again, as with most of Paramount's Blu-Ray releases the image quality is superb. Colours are natural, there is a light level of film grain and detail levels, thanks to the 1920 x 1080p resolution, are impressive. Contrast levels are occasionally a little high in our books, but that's a minor fault in an otherwise impressive video transfer.

J.K. Simmons is hilarious in I Love You, Man.

AUDIO
I Love You, Man comes to Blu-Ray with a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 (48Khz, 24-bit) audio track. It's not the most engaging or "demo-worthy" soundtrack you've ever heard, but it gets the job done. At times it the audio sounds every so slightly dull and lacking life, but at times, when they're in busier locations the soundtrack seems to come to life with some surround sound use as well as sub-woofer. For a comedy, it's not too bad.

There are plenty of other audio tracks on this disc including English Audio Descriptive, German, Spanish, French and Italian Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks encoded at 640kbps. The commentary is subtitled in English, German, Spanish, French and Spanish while the main movie includes subtitles in those languages as well as English for the Hearing Impaired, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish and Swedish.

EXTRAS
The Blu-Ray disc of I Love You, Man isn't overly choc full of extras, but does include a few worthy of your time.

Audio commentary by Director John Hamburg and Actors Paul Rudd and Jason Segel: This is a fairly entertaining commentary which includes plenty of stories about the production of the movie, but also some mucking around. Like the movie it's pretty entertaining and worth a listen.

Look into my eyes... I Love You, Man.

The Making of I Love You, Man (17:29/HD): A little bit self-praising, but this documentary has some interesting moments, and funny behind the scenes moments.

Extras (22:25/HD): This is a lengthy sequence of alternate takes and lines for scenes in the movie.

Extended Scenes (12:39/HD): Six sequences are given extended scenes here. Some pretty amusing stuff which obviously had to be cut for pacing, but are still quite entertaining. Of particular note is the entire song by Rush.

Extended Scenes (3:18/HD): Three fairly short deleted scenes ("The Lost Man Date - Rugby", "Gay Bowling League Night", "Groomsmen Photo Shoot") are presented here. Fairly entertaining, especially the photo session clip.

Time for a drinking game boys.

Gag Reel (11:25/HD): A fairly lengthy series of gags and goofs on set, but also quite a bit of on-set footage. A bit better then your usual gag reel there is some amusing stuff here.

Redband Trailer (2:43/HD): The uncensored trailer for I Love You, Man. It's not bad but it does show some of the best bits of the movie so skip it if you don't want some spoilers!

OVERALL
While it's not the best movie ever I quite enjoyed I Love You, Man which has plenty of witty comedy, and some very likable characters. This Blu-Ray release includes a solid audio visual transfer as well as several enjoyable extras.

Review By: Dave Warner

THE MOVIE	7/10
THE VIDEO	8/10
THE AUDIO	7/10
THE EXTRAS	5/10
OVERALL	7/10