For all intents and purposes,
”
A Guy Thing
”
is a weak half-hour sitcom stretched out to 90 minutes.
Julia Stiles’ growth as an actress and her on-the-mark comedic timing are about the only things worth watching in the new comedy “A Guy Thing,” currently playing at Premiere Cinemas.
For all intents and purposes, “A Guy Thing” is a weak half-hour sitcom stretched out to 90 minutes. When director Chris Koch (“Snow Day” ) decided to dive into this project, somebody should have warned him just how shallow the plot is.
I guess the idea behind this movie was to try to make the audience laugh through a series of embarrassing moments.
The only problem is, as the moments get more and more embarrassing I started to cringe instead of laugh.
Maybe I’m being too harsh on this movie because like a lot of people, I’ve suffered the pangs of something going awry and being publicly embarrassed. But then again, maybe not.
Too quickly, the movie turned from being humorous to embarrassingly devoid of anything creative or exciting. I found myself cringing at how weak some of the jokes were.
At times it was difficult to believe that this movie was written by the same trio that wrote “Meet the Parents,” a much more amusing and endearing movie than “Guy Thing.”
Although this movie had a few funny moments, they were vastly overshadowed by poor set-ups that had no jokes behind them.
“A Guy Thing” takes place in the frantic days leading up to a wedding, and like the earlier picture the new one plays out as a series of escalating embarrassments involving a seemingly clueless young man named Paul Morse, played by Jason Lee (“Chasing Amy,” “Dogma” and “Vanilla Sky.”)
Paul, the impending groom, wakes up the morning after his bachelor party with a pretty stranger named Becky, played wonderfully by Stiles (“Save the Last Dance,” “O” and “The Bourne Identity”) in his bed. He has no idea how she got there, but he does know his annoyingly sweet fiancee, Karen, played by Selma Blair (“The Sweetest Thing,” “Cruel intentions” and “Legally Blonde”) is about to show up at his door. So he hustles Becky out the door and then feebly tries to hide the underwear she left behind. That’s just the start of this elaborate and unnecessary cover-up, which you know from the beginning is destined to fail.
In a continued resurgence in his acting career, James Brolin (“Catch Me if You Can,” “Traffic” and “Antwone Fisher”) surprisingly pulls off some of the few funny parts of this movie as the intimidating “man’s man” who makes sure that Paul is going to take care of his daughter.
There is no attempt at originality with the characterizations of the cheated-on bride Karen or her rich parents, played by Brolin and Diana Scarwid (“What lies Beneath,” “Truman” and “Mommie Dearest”). Stiles, however, finds a way to shine at times in this train to nowhere with her good grasp of the quirky nature of the picture. She delivers the lines in a believable fashion.
This movie has some strong language and sexual situations that make it unsuitable for young children or sensitive adults.
