TRUST THE MAN (2006) **1/2 David Duchovny, Julianne Moore, Billy Crudup, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Eva Mendes, Dagmara Dominczyk, Justin Bartha, Glenn Fitzgerald, Garry Shandling, Ellen Barkin, Bob Balaban, James LeGros, Jim Gaffigan. (Dir: Bart Freundlich)
Who Da "Man"? Duchovny shines in otherwise routine rom-dramedy
The whole men and women dichotomy thing has been around for so long hell, since Adam and Eve and seemingly even longer on screen from Bogart & Bacall to Stiller & Diaz that it seems like a given for cinematic license to attempt to re-boot the whole "What really is the deal between the sexes?" The answers proposed here are neither original nor well handled but despite their clumsiness, hey, at least they're trying.
That seems to be the message for a quartet of young Manhattanites in this frequently amusing yet ultimately half-baked comedy/drama focusing on Tom (Duchovny, in one of his better on-screen roles in some time), a former advertising wiz, now a stay-at-home daddy and his famous actress wife Rebecca (Moore, reuniting with her "Evolution" co-star with mixed, yet ultimately pleasant results) and her brother Toby (Crudup adding another notch to his Peter Pan-type cabal of characters), a freelance sports journalist who has been in a 7 year relationship with her best friend Elaine (Gyllenhaal having a blast with her complex role), who works in publishing and is shopping her children's book around in the process.
The guys are, you know, guys. They like their porn, SportsCenter, TiVo and being deliberately ironic as well as passing wind and flirting with single moms while the gals, are, you know, very serious about how both their love lives deserve more (Tom loves sex but gets it in a blue moon from Rebecca, whose slightly frigid demeanor instead is her defense mechanism with everything borderlining psychoses; while Elaine wants marriage and children as Toby is utterly clueless to her needs, despite the great and frequent sex).
Tom's meet-cute with Pamela (the always fetching Dominczyk who really needs to be on the big-screen more; she's one of the damndest beautiful faces I've ever seen) at his children's day care center opens a door to the possibility of an affair while Toby, Tom's best bud, keeps running into an old college crush, Faith (the sexily saucy Mendes), who seems willing even more when Elaine abruptly dumps Toby's vapid ass.
Despite Toby's arbitrary therapy sessions with his passive/aggressive shrink (shrewdly played to comic affect by Balaban) he is just being Toby but obviously that is not enough for Elaine, who is looking for someone who will be more attentive. Rebecca's fix-ups for her girlfriend is one of the more humorous moments of the piece particularly a Eurotrash doofus named Goran (Fitzgerald), who should have subtitles to his atrocious garbled accent. Rebecca herself has a possible fling-to-be with an inept co-star (Bartha), a years younger dude who is equally daft at how to be subtle with his attempt at seduction.
For the most part Freundlich, Moore's real-life spouse (who collaborated both with Crudup in the interesting '70s-feel drama "World Traveler"), mixes it up with laughs and predictable drama (the affairs, duh, ruin everyone's lives!) but he certainly has a flair for making likable actors into likable jerks. It's only in the last third of the film that I kind of winced for its sudden theatricality (well, I guess this is a lame argument since it takes place in a theater) but I did enjoy the second best cinematic holler of 'ELAINE!!!" trust me you will too when you see it.
Duchovny's Tom is really a decent guy who loves his family but blindly follows his yearnings for something anything resembling something he can relate to. He has a very funny sequence at a Sexual Anonymous meeting and a very heartfelt conversation with Crudup as the men try to make sense of their aimless lives of snarky one-liners and realize, "Hey I have a beautiful woman in my life who really completes me!"
Crudup, one of my favorite contemporaries (as well as DD), is a riot and you do feel for the dummy when he keeps being his kid-like character when his gal drops him like a bad habit and his scenes with Gyllenhaal are tenderly warm and amusing. She also counters him with some sharp observations about them that Moore also reflects in her marriage (who cries/laughs at the same time better than her?)
The look of the film is crisply lensed by Tim Orr giving NYC a clear-eyed, picaresque portrait of the best city in the world where yes, 4 people can love one another even if ½ of them aren't aware of just how good they have it.
My biggest problem was making Moore's character such a hard character to like (the birthday party scene after she's accidentally injured by one of her children had me grinding my teeth at how nasty she was to her husband) and maybe that's why I didn't enjoy the entire film. But in the end, it isn't a bad film at all, just a bit misunderstood.
Who Da "Man"? Duchovny shines in otherwise routine rom-dramedy
The whole men and women dichotomy thing has been around for so long hell, since Adam and Eve and seemingly even longer on screen from Bogart & Bacall to Stiller & Diaz that it seems like a given for cinematic license to attempt to re-boot the whole "What really is the deal between the sexes?" The answers proposed here are neither original nor well handled but despite their clumsiness, hey, at least they're trying.
That seems to be the message for a quartet of young Manhattanites in this frequently amusing yet ultimately half-baked comedy/drama focusing on Tom (Duchovny, in one of his better on-screen roles in some time), a former advertising wiz, now a stay-at-home daddy and his famous actress wife Rebecca (Moore, reuniting with her "Evolution" co-star with mixed, yet ultimately pleasant results) and her brother Toby (Crudup adding another notch to his Peter Pan-type cabal of characters), a freelance sports journalist who has been in a 7 year relationship with her best friend Elaine (Gyllenhaal having a blast with her complex role), who works in publishing and is shopping her children's book around in the process.
The guys are, you know, guys. They like their porn, SportsCenter, TiVo and being deliberately ironic as well as passing wind and flirting with single moms while the gals, are, you know, very serious about how both their love lives deserve more (Tom loves sex but gets it in a blue moon from Rebecca, whose slightly frigid demeanor instead is her defense mechanism with everything borderlining psychoses; while Elaine wants marriage and children as Toby is utterly clueless to her needs, despite the great and frequent sex).
Tom's meet-cute with Pamela (the always fetching Dominczyk who really needs to be on the big-screen more; she's one of the damndest beautiful faces I've ever seen) at his children's day care center opens a door to the possibility of an affair while Toby, Tom's best bud, keeps running into an old college crush, Faith (the sexily saucy Mendes), who seems willing even more when Elaine abruptly dumps Toby's vapid ass.
Despite Toby's arbitrary therapy sessions with his passive/aggressive shrink (shrewdly played to comic affect by Balaban) he is just being Toby but obviously that is not enough for Elaine, who is looking for someone who will be more attentive. Rebecca's fix-ups for her girlfriend is one of the more humorous moments of the piece particularly a Eurotrash doofus named Goran (Fitzgerald), who should have subtitles to his atrocious garbled accent. Rebecca herself has a possible fling-to-be with an inept co-star (Bartha), a years younger dude who is equally daft at how to be subtle with his attempt at seduction.
For the most part Freundlich, Moore's real-life spouse (who collaborated both with Crudup in the interesting '70s-feel drama "World Traveler"), mixes it up with laughs and predictable drama (the affairs, duh, ruin everyone's lives!) but he certainly has a flair for making likable actors into likable jerks. It's only in the last third of the film that I kind of winced for its sudden theatricality (well, I guess this is a lame argument since it takes place in a theater) but I did enjoy the second best cinematic holler of 'ELAINE!!!" trust me you will too when you see it.
Duchovny's Tom is really a decent guy who loves his family but blindly follows his yearnings for something anything resembling something he can relate to. He has a very funny sequence at a Sexual Anonymous meeting and a very heartfelt conversation with Crudup as the men try to make sense of their aimless lives of snarky one-liners and realize, "Hey I have a beautiful woman in my life who really completes me!"
Crudup, one of my favorite contemporaries (as well as DD), is a riot and you do feel for the dummy when he keeps being his kid-like character when his gal drops him like a bad habit and his scenes with Gyllenhaal are tenderly warm and amusing. She also counters him with some sharp observations about them that Moore also reflects in her marriage (who cries/laughs at the same time better than her?)
The look of the film is crisply lensed by Tim Orr giving NYC a clear-eyed, picaresque portrait of the best city in the world where yes, 4 people can love one another even if ½ of them aren't aware of just how good they have it.
My biggest problem was making Moore's character such a hard character to like (the birthday party scene after she's accidentally injured by one of her children had me grinding my teeth at how nasty she was to her husband) and maybe that's why I didn't enjoy the entire film. But in the end, it isn't a bad film at all, just a bit misunderstood.