Bad Girls Guide to Good Film, the essays - I Love You Man

I Love You, Man: The Coming Out of the Bromance

“You challenging me, princess?”- Chazz, Blades of Glory

    The genre of film I’m calling the Bromance has been bringing in the bucks since the burgeoning dawn of cinema. Dudes like films about Dudes doing things with other Dudes. Everybody does. That shit is funny.

We have watched the brawniest of all the brawn (and every shade in between, down through Eddie Izzard, all the way to Sandra Berhnardt and Tom Cruise) commit and fight and comment on heinous crime for centuries for now, and it never gets old. The Buddy Film is perhaps the greatest, most encompassing genre. If you think of Seven Samurai, Star Wars, TGTB&TU, Thelma & Louise, Pulp Fiction, Apocalypse Now and Donnie Darko, for example, as buddy movies, then perhaps you understand my point.

    Dude culture, at least in my neck of the woods, has been fairly consistent and clearly defined for essentially it’s entire history. I am trying not to offend anyone by saying “Racism and homophobia are STILL a pretty serious issue here, in places*  but...” there it is. But the world changes, and so do mens’ (and all peoples) images, whether they like it or not. Obviously in some places, changes comes slower than others, and sometimes only with great revolution. However, oh great revolution in little shades, cinema is one of the ways that entire cultures’ minds are changed, and sometimes, that’s actually a good thing.

    I confess, I was a fairly ambivalent toward Will Ferrell at first. Ok, I admit it, I didn’t get it, and I hated him. But then I saw Talladega Nights (2006), and it all started to make sense. I fell in love with him and this old-as-the-hills yet still somehow shiny new genre on the spot.

Hot Fuzz (2007)

- Frost and Pegg in general
Tropic Thunder  (2008)

SuperBad (2007),

Fanboys (2008)

Pineapple Express (2008)
- footnote Seth Rogan in Anchorman (2004) AND Donnie Darko (2001), btw... oowee-eeoo - these are the Bromantic Deities!
- Danny McBride

No secret that I love the things and people that shake the dirt and rust off of old ideas. These boys are shitkickers for sure, and yet adorable and stupid (sometimes, but mostly pretttty clever) and normal looking and sneaky-as-fuck in their wonderfully subjective politics. Plus it brings them in bigs bucks, lets them do what they love ,and gives us things to laugh and think about in the process. Not to mention opening closed minds like a giant can opener. Hoo-rah!

- BG/sll

*like my Dear Old Next Door Neighbors, I just found out. “I don’t mind them, as long as they stay in their place.” I shouldn’t have been surprised, but there it is.