Nikki's Movie Hut: August 2009

Will no doubt end up my surprise of the year. I was not expecting to hate this film, but I wasn't at all expecting to like it as much as I did. It's not the funniest movie of all time (as I've been told by many, many people), but it is good, and I laughed a lot.

Why is it good? Well, for several reasons. Mostly, I enjoyed the fact that it wasn't crude. I was waiting for much crudeness, in line with Superbad and Step Brothers -- another couple of films I was told were the funniest movies ever (they weren't). Resisting an avalanche of farty, pooh-y, sex gags (which pass, it seems, for comedy these days), this movie has a real innocence to it, which adds to its premise of four fish very much out of water. These are not your Trent-like Swingers Vegas-babies, they're four men (well, perhaps with the exception of Alan) who live fairly standard lives thrown into a world they think they understand -- they've obviously seen Swingers a few times -- but they really don't. Even the alpha, Phil, is less cocky and more assured when he stands up to take charge of each bizarre situation.

In effect, these men are easier to relate to and it's more fun watching them get into scrapes when we see they're just as normal as we are, and we would also be as confounded in tangles with Mike Tyson, Vegas mafioso, strippers, and a tiger.

That said, the guys still know how to party. But this movie is not about the good times, but the after effects. The scrapes -- like a post-modern After Hours -- are not what bring the comedy here, but the guys' interaction. The nerdy, safe one, the crazy one, the soon-to-be-married one, and the uber-male -- they all react differently, and their reactions to each other are what make this movie funny. There are some great one-liners, some hilarious conversations, and even though it all leads to an ultra-standard cutesy ending, you get there with a sense that modern comedy may have shifted yet another gear -- one miles from the pooh and the farts and more towards actual, relatale, character-driven scenarios. Let's hope so.