This review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.

On a second season episode of the deliriously funny How I Met Your Mother, Marshall, played by Jason Segel, is struggling with being single after losing his girlfriend of many years. Marshall decides to invite his friend Brad to go to a concert he and his girlfriend were supposed to attend together. Several brunch dates and a Broadway play later, Marshall realizes that he and Brad behave outwardly as if they are in a romantic relationship. Somebody must have liked that episode because it appears to be the genesis for I Love You, Man, a bromantic comedy that succeeds in spite of the fact that the average film possesses no real highs or lows. Perhaps we need look no further than the incontestable fact that it is scientifically impossible not to like Paul Rudd.

Rudd plays Peter Klaven, a moderately successful real estate agent about to marry Zooey (Rashida Jones), the woman of his dreams. There’s just one little problem. Peter is a girlfriend guy. He’s always found relationships with women easier and as such has no real guy friends. Who then will be the best man at his wedding? Peter decides to audition best friends, setting himself up on a series of man dates in the hopes of finding a suitable candidate to participate in his big day.

This, of course, leads to a series of incredibly awkward encounters. That is until Peter bumps into Sydney Fife (the aforementioned Jason Segel) — personable, free-spirited and exceptionally blunt. Peter and Sydney instantly hit it off, but the closer Peter grows to his new friend, the further he drifts away from Zooey. With the wedding looming, Peter must decide whether his new friend is worth keeping at the expense of the woman he loves.

I Love You, Man is an insightful comedy, a canny examination of male friendships and the manner in which even the most platonic relationships still appear, to the outside observer — if not the participants themselves — as following all the same beats of a budding romance. Mixing broad comedy with sometimes uncomfortable, universal truths can be difficult, but I Love You, Man finds a comfortable way through it.

However, if I Love You, Man works, it is not because of its plot or its premise but its leads. Most men, if they are honest, will admit to a rabid man-crush on hilarious everyman Paul Rudd. A surprise standout in 1995’s Clueless, Rudd wallowed in relative obscurity for another decade before Judd Apatow found him and made him a fixture in such films as The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up. Rudd’s masterful comedic timing, especially as he awkwardly tries to figure out exactly how one acts and sounds manly (how can a guy this dorky be this endearing?), plays perfectly off of Segel’s (another Apatow vet) self-assured zaniness. And still supporting player Jon Favreau and Jaime Presley manage to steal a scene or two.

Not satisfied with resting on their comedic laurels, Rudd and Segel are here to remind us that last years’ Role Models and Forgetting Sarah Marshall weren’t flukes. We love you, men.

© Copyright 2009 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.