Sunday, 28 February 2016

I Love You, Man
(2009)

40%

Yet another White Men undergoing a crisis in their masculinity comedy that shows no sign of ever trending out. Given the stupidly orificial nature of the humor, one wonders if the comedy produces the crisis rather than being merely a reflection of it. Or worse, that it actually perpetuates the desire to remain emotionally immature.

Rather more silly than funny, the sophomoric jocularity will have you falling asleep long before the film ends. It is as if the filmmakers think all the jokes have already been told, so have decided to make fun of the very concept of comedy. They are daring the audience to laugh at complete rubbish that does not even have the compensation of being the slightest bit surreal or even absurd.

The tiresome orificialness is presented as if it were emotional honesty, rather than affective self indulgence, in a tale wagging the dog story of sexual relationships wherein sex causes love rather than the other way round. Such relationships fail – as here – since they lack substance because the marriage is more important than the relationship. Yet they are still presented as either desirable or unavoidable in the apparent absence of any alternative. This explains this movie's lack of genuine content that is as morally evasive as its characters.

The superficiality of men who cannot relate to other men without the fear of homosexuality is as tiring for them as it is for us, the audience. Films about superficial people can never be anything other than boringly superficial, unless their problems are dramatically explored. If this is really how White males relate to one another in Western culture then the Feminists must be right when they claim masculinity here is in (an unfunny) crisis.

The immaturity of the filmmakers is exposed by their desire to tell their audience what they already know, as if this were somehow profound. Like a teenager discovering sex for the first time and thinking that they are the only one.

One day these filmmakers will actually come to terms with their incipient homosexuality, their fear of women and their refusal to grow up. But people without a sense of humor can never laugh at themselves. The self indulgence here is distinctly embarrassing in a movie composed almost entirely of weak, deleted scenes taken from a much better film. The worst sin of films like these is that they are so parsimonious with their jokes.

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Science:



No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.



Jacob Bronowski… (1908 - 74), British scientist, author. Encounter (London, July 1971).


Sleep of Reason:



The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.



Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes… (1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.


Humans & Aliens:



I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.



Terence… (circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.


Führerprinzip:



One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.