I love you, man (2007)

I love you, man (John Hamburg) may not be a good movie but if one wants a study of infantilized masculinity, this is a good start. However, I doubt that the aim of the film was to give that sort of account. The main character, Peter, lives with his girlfriend and he is kind of satisfied with their life together. He's a rather stiff person who seems to be hiding within his shell. Something is missing. He has no male friends! The axiomatic truth posed by the story is that a guy need some bromance in his life in order to be a thriving human being. The answer to this predicament is Sidney, a walking and talking man-cave in whose little man-cave our (anti)hero finds some man-love and man-comfort. Sidney is just sensitive enough, macho enough, but not too much. They jam together, they drink beer and they are close-close. A man needs some space to kick back & crack a few cold ones, right - for that, a man needs company, male company. The problem is that Peter must also act the part of Heterosexual Male. The man-love must remain a function. I love you, man clearly expresses the fear of real love between men, but at the same time it wants to be a modern film that has a relaxed relation to homosexuality. One can say that the infantilized masculinity presented by and praised in this film is a solution to this problem: these two guys are allowed to take it easy together, to regress into a state of man-cave-bliss, but the problems arise when all this starts to mean something. One rendering of this infantilized state is that it is a secluded sphere, no questions asked, a fantasy world. I am surprised how much this rather conventional b/romance engaged me: it is precisely the tensions within its ideals that makes it interesting.