Paul Rudd is one of my favorite actors working today.  While he's best known for his smart-aleck supporting characters as seen in Judd Apatow films like "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up", he's got tremendous range from his amazing dramatic performance in "The Shape of Things" to his unforgettable John Lennon impression in "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story".  This time he's playing against his familiar wise-ass that boosted his profile last fall in "Role Models" and playing the epitome of lameness as a guy desperately hunting for a male best friend.  The film is a little too long and makes the Apatow-formula a little too familiar (even though Apatow had nothing to do with this movie) but Rudd and co-star Jason Segel along with some key supporting roles from Jon Favreau and Thomas Lennon make "I Love You, Man" a lot of fun.

Peter Klaven (Rudd) is about to get married to the lovely Zooey (Rashida Jones who doesn't really get to stretch her comedic muscles with this role and I feel that unless you're Leslie Mann, you don't get to have anywhere near as much fun as the boys do in these movies) but he doesn't have a male best friend and after a few misfires, he crosses paths with uber-man (and perhaps uber-man-child) Sydney Fife (Jason Segel).  Sydney is borderline-symbolic as he doesn't have much of a character but represents everything fun that men wish they could be before moving on to responsible adulthood.  I like the film's message that we have to indulge our Sydney self if we want to be complete and honest with the people we love and allow ourselves to be silly but I'm not sure if that's true simply because I'm not at that stage of my life yet.  We certainly can't be all-Peter or all-Sydney all the time.

Where "I Love You, Man" falters is that there's a bit too much "me-too" to the writing.  Apatow has wrought a formula of man-children, gross-out gags, frank sex-talk and it all surrounds a sweet message about personal growth and maturity.  It's not done as skillfully as Apatow nor are the jokes as funny but in hijacking his company of Rudd and Segel along with some "State" alums like Thomas Lennon, Joe Lo Truglio, "Human Giant's" Rob Huebel, and then Jon Favreau playing the world's biggest dick (the guy owns every scene he's in and it's so weird when you remember he directs "Iron Man" and that this is kind of his side-job now), you have enough talented comedians in play that their improvisation and comic timing can carry just about anything.

But this is Rudd's show.  He's in almost every scene and his nebbishy insecurities and utter inability to be cool is never grating.  There's some contact embarrassment but Rudd always finds a way to make the character work.  This is the kind of character that would have been tiresome and familiar if played by someone like Ben Stiller where we've seen it from him a billion times already, but Rudd makes the character feel fresh, original, and all his own and while Segel provides a valuable assist, "I Love You, Man" succeeds because of Rudd.