by YAHOO! SEARCH
‘Man,’ oh man!
Published:August 14, 2009, 6:09 AM
Updated: August 21, 2010, 1:21 AM
Now this is “added value.” The Paul Rudd/Jason Segel “bromance” “I Love You, Man” is one of this year’s biggest comedy hits. It’s even better on DVD ($29.98 DVD, $39.99 Blu-ray; Paramount, available now).
Director John Hamburg has piled on so many great extras — not throwaway junk but genuinely hilarious material — that it’s almost like a whole new movie.
Just about everyone who likes comedy has seen this effort about a bridegroom (Rudd) who has no male friends and goes trolling for man-pals to act as his groomsmen. He discovers an oddball (Segel) with whom he bonds over the Canadian power rock trio Rush.
Cinema historians may well mark “I Love You, Man” as the moment at which Rudd became a full-fledged movie star. His fastidious, uptight character is forever attempting to say something witty and appear casually cool. Instead, he becomes a font of malapropisms and dweeby body language. His disastrous attempts at hip-ness become his defining characteristic.
In a wonderful commentary track, Rudd (along with Segel and Hamburg) explains what he was going for: “A big man saying earnest things a 14-year-old girl would say — and getting it wrong.”
Once in a while the trio will actually address what’s happening on screen, but mostly they sound like three old friends sitting around trying to amuse one another. It’s so entertaining you’ll watch the film all over again just to revel in their often rude repartee.
The DVD offers a standard making-of documentary, but it’s with the wealth of unused footage that this package hits a home entertainment home run.
Virtually every scene in “I Love You, Man” was shot in improvisatory fashion, with Segel, Rudd and the other players freely riffing. A scene that lasted 30 seconds on screen was probably culled from five minutes of hysterical ad-libbing.
A bit in which Segel gets hit in the shin by a hard-driven golf ball goes by quickly in the movie. In the extras, he spends minutes cursing, bellowing, weeping, writhing in pain.
A scene where Rudd tells his fiancee (Rashida Jones) about being French kissed by a man-date becomes a torrent of hilarious/lurid descriptions.
Here’s a weird one.
Set in Newfoundland in 1007, “Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America” ($26.98, Magnolia Home Entertainment, available now), follows two Viking warriors who survive an Indian attack and must trek back to their base camp several hundred miles up the coast.
(This is not a completely nutsy notion — Leif Ericson sailed from Greenland to Canada in 1001.)
First-time filmmaker Tony Stone — actor, writer, director, co-producer— gives us a yarn that is exquisitely beautiful, narratively ponderous, historically accurate and unintentionally amusing.
Orn (Stone) and Volnard (Fiore Tedesco) cross a pristine landscape full of dangers. (The photography is sumptuous, save for some irritating shaky-cam.) They build a lean-to in a sequence that’s like a how-to video. They spear fish.
They speak — rarely — in Old Norse, with subtitles that sound curiously contemporary: “We’re toast if we stay here.”
At one point, Volnard befriends a Christian monk whose wilderness church they burn. Orn is drugged by an Indian woman who makes him her love slave.
Silly, yes. But also gorgeous. And filmmaker Stone is so goofily sincere you find yourself going along with his madness.
Coming Tuesday
“Hannah Montana: The Movie” (Disney), “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days: Deluxe Edition” (Paramount), “Husbands” (Sony), “Icons of Sci-Fi: Toho Collection” (Sony), “The Last House on the Left” (Universal), “Pete’s Dragon: High Flying Edition” (Disney), “The Smurfs: Smurfy Tales” (Warner Home Video), “Sons of Anarchy: Season One” (Fox), “These Old Broads” (Sony).
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