On DVD: August 11, 2009

Reviews of I Love You, Man and Obsessed

I Love You, Man
Paramount
$30
Blu-ray: $40

Plot: After popping the question to his longtime girlfriend, Peter (Paul Rudd) realizes that he’s in need of a guy-pal to serve as his best man at the wedding.

Opinion: I Love You, Man is about as innovative as your typical romantic comedy, which is to say, not very.  But that’s largely by design.  Writer/director John Hamburg is deliberately following the rigid formula that drives movies like 27 Dresses, Made of Honor and his own 2004 rom-com Along Came Polly.  That formula usually involves a boy meeting a girl, fighting with the girl, making up with the girl, making out with the girl, breaking up with the girl and then getting back together with the girl after resolving some easily avoided misunderstanding.  I Love You, Man hits all the same story beats, but applies them to a boy/boy friendship as opposed to a boy/girl romance.  Fortunately, the rest of the film is much, much funnier than 27 Dresses and Along Came Polly, thanks largely to its terrific cast.  Jason Segel and Paul Rudd are the stars of the show, of course, but they’re ably backed up by Rashida Jones and a supporting ensemble that includes ringers like Andy Samberg, J.K. Simmons, Rob Huebel, Jaime Pressly and Jon Favreau.  It’s a real pleasure to watch these pros at work.

Bonus Features: Lots of deleted and extended scenes, a gag reel with some pretty funny outtakes, a making-of featurette and a commentary by the two stars and their director.

Verdict: Buy It

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Obsessed
Sony
$29
Blu-ray: $40

Plot: A successful businessman (Idris Elba) finds his personal and professional lives imperiled when he strikes up an office flirtation with a psycho homewrecker (Ali Larter).

Opinion: All of the trailers for Obsessed hyped the Beyonce/Larter stand-off as if it were the second coming of Ali vs. Foreman.  And as fans of exploitation cinema know, well-staged catfights are guaranteed crowd-pleasers, particularly when the fighters are as hot as these two.  Director Steve Shill milks this sequence for all that its worth.  Too bad the rest of the movie is overlong and, occasionally, overly serious.  In an interesting twist on the Fatal Attraction formula, where it was up to the man to solve his own psycho bitch problem, Obsessed depicts its hero as something of a cuckold who can’t bring himself to confront his would-be mistress—or his wife—head-on.  Instead, mama tiger Beyonce ends up having to do his dirty work.  The movie never tries to address the thorny racial politics behind its premise—predatory white woman tries to break up a happily married, upwardly mobile black couple—but that’s probably a good thing.  Like the movies it’s imitating, Obsessed is best enjoyed as glossy, campy fantasy.

Bonus Features: Three making-of featurettes, including one devoted to chronicling all the training and stunt work that went into producing that memorable catfight.

Verdict: Rent It

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The Soloist
Paramount
$30
Blu-ray: $40

Plot: A cynical journalist (Robert Downey Jr.) learns important life lessons after meeting a homeless musician (Jamie Foxx) with mental problems.

Opinion: Try though they might, it’s difficult for any A-list movie star to resist the lure of playing a character with a physical disability or mental illness.  How can they when they’ve watched so many of their bretheren win critical acclaim and golden statues for playing deaf mutes, autistic blackjack players and one-legged skydivers with terminal elbow cancer.  But for every My Left Foot or Rain Man, there’s a film like I Am Sam, Radio and now The Soloist, where a respected actor (in this case Jamie Foxx) delivers a performance that’s the equivalent of cutting one on the first date—completely embarrassing.  Ironically, it’s Foxx’s gift for mimicry—the same skill that made him a perfect Ray Charles—that defeats him here.  He focuses the brunt of his energy on recreating Nathaniel’s physical tics and rapid speaking style, but never gets at the emotional core of this man.  As a result, it often feels like he’s delivering a stand-up routine rather than a dramatic performance.  The Soloist also suffers from a pronounced case of split-personality disorder, repeatedly cutting between Nathaniel’s genuinely tragic story and the cynical Lopez’s self-pitying quest for something or someone to believe in.

Bonus Features: A commentary track from the director, deleted scenes and a featurette focusing on LA’s homeless problem.

Verdict: Skip It

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The Class
Sony Pictures Classics
$29
Blu-ray: $40

Plot: One year in the life of a French public school teacher and his unruly class of teenagers.

Opinion: Leave it to the French to school Hollywood on how to make an inspirational teacher movie that’s not only genuinely inspiring, but also completely realistic.  Start by casting an honest-to-God high-school teacher as your main character; no joke, the film’s star Francois Begaudeau is an author and former teacher whose book about his experiences in the French public school system was the inspiration for the film.  Next, hire actual high-schoolers–and not 25-year-old models–to play the pupils in the movie.  Then, toss all these folks in a small classroom together and stand back to film what happens.  The result is that rare film that depicts the act of learning in all its messy, difficult and, at times, joyous glory.

Bonus Features: Director Laurent Cantet contributes commentary over select scenes and a making-of featurette showcases the movie’s semi-improvised production process.

Verdict: Buy It

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Also on DVD:

That crazy New Zealand folk-rock band is back for more hilarious songs and deadpan hijinks in Flight of the Conchords: The Complete Second Season (HBO, $30), the sophomore (and possibly final) season of HBO’s cult comedy series.  At the start of the last TV season, The CW was ridiculed for reviving that ’80s chestnut Beverly Hills 90210, but the new primetime teen soap serial did boffo ratings for the network.  Before Season 2 begins, catch up on what you missed with the new box set, 90210: The First Season (Paramount, $50).  In other box-set news, the Blu-ray only release Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: 25th Anniversary Collection (Warner, $85) offers all three live-action Ninja Turtles films, as well as the recent animated feature.  Finally, the low-budget sci-fi action flick Mutant Chronicles (Magnolia, $27) features such genre stalwarts as Ron “Hellboy” Perlman and Thomas “The Punisher” Jane battling mutants in the distant future.