The Good Guy (2009)

The Good Guy (2009)

Well here we have a different take on the "romance" genre. It's actually tauted as a romantic comedy, which is really misleading to unsuspecting film goers. Perhaps that's part of the schtick as we are also treated to the filmic equivalent oft seen in novels, which is the unreliable narrator.

The premise is simple enough, a well-to-do wall street guy is obviously at some pivotal point at his life, as he's ringing the buzzer or his girlfriends apartment. It is pathetic fallacy at its finest as it is also pouring rain, he has lost his wallet and locked out of his own apartment. But alas, we see his girlfriend in the arms of another man, and she is reluctant to let him in.

So what has transpired to make us arrive at this point? Cue the rest of the movie. I will potentially have already spoiled the movie for the more astute readers out there, but in the event you don't want me to go further into detail, I will simply say I didn't ultimately care for this story.

Now onward to the spoilers, consider yourself warned.


So basically we have Thomas (Scott Porter, currently seen on The Good Wife), Beth (Alexis Bledel, who I guess was on Gilmore Girls), and Daniel (Bryan Greenberg, who I have never heard of before, but some may recognize from One Tree Hill I suppose). These are the main characters, two of which may or may not be the titular character in question. Rounding out the supporting cast is a plethora of bit characters, including most notably Anna Chlumsky.

...In the great words of an old drama prof I once had who hated my guts, SIDE BAR! I have to include this note because I would be ashamed not to admit that I was surprised to see Anna Chlumsky again after all these years. I had very nearly forgotten all about her, but seeing her again I was whisked back to time when I was a doe-eyed eleven year old boy, and having watched My Girl for the first time I developed a big crush on Anna Chlumksy. Since then she kind of disappeared from film except for bit parts here and there, but I definitely felt nostalgic after seeing her again. Okay, back to our regular scheduled programming...

Okay so we have a story revolving around three characters and we are supposedly meant to relate to at least one of them and hope for the desired outcome. The only props I will give is that this movie plays against convention only in terms of narrative. In actual plot development it plays EXACTLY to convention so much as to go out of its way to force you to hate certain characters if only to make you "like" the other characters by default because they aren't as despicable as others. One guy is so despicable that despite starting out as a facade of a complex character he grows increasingly more one dimensional as the film transpires. One girl is so tired looking and so obviously disinterested in the world around her, that I could honestly care less about who she winds up with. Another guy starts off so one dimensional that we are meant to see growth as the narrative plays out, but truthfully if you think about it, he's still a waste of time and effort in regards to character. Then unfortunately we have pretty much every other girl in the film who is a man-hating-but-ultimately-shallow-and-needy female who are little more than caricatures then real people.

That's a very vague and wordy spoiler if there ever was one, but I think you can figure out who's who. I mean we run the gamut for extremes in this film. The unabashedly confident cheating bastard, the heroine who we are told basically outright is as virtuous as Elizabeth Bennet, the socially awkward loser who is essentially Dudley Do-right with Asperger's. I mean seriously, the guy was more awkward in social situations than the guy PORTRAYING a man with Aspergers in the movie ADAM, and yet we are supposed to believe he is the Mr. Darcy of this film? Ridonkulous. Oh and the Pride and Prejudice references aren't subtle for fear of alienating the viewers who have never picked up a book before, so they inundate us with literary references abound. See that makes the movie SMRT. Only learn-ed folk can catch the nuance of the brilliant performances on screen.

But is it any good? No, I can see why some people would like it, but I think these people probably try and fit the world into tidy little categories where people are not multi-faceted human beings but rather paper cut-outs with arbitrary singular motivations.

The good: Anna Chlumsky. Why? Well it's great to see her on film again. Good for her. I also liked Aaron Yoo, an asian actor people probably wouldn't know unless to see him. I didn't care for the leads. Although I suppose given that my wife enjoys watching "The Good Wife" it's a testament to Scott Porter to say that he plays douchebag well.

The bad: The attempts the film makes to make it different, for all its efforts you can adequately predict the movie every bit of the way and you actually HOPE that there will be a twist that makes it redeemable. This is the filmic equivalent to a Stephanie Meyer novel that deludes people into thinking it is a great narrative. Oh whoops... disregard to all Stephanie Meyer fans out there.

Final Thoughts: I won't hold it against this film for being deceptive at the beginning. I thought I was going to get a romantic comedy (like it was listed) and then given some of the serious angles I thought we'd be treated to decent intellectual romantic drama. Then a quarter of the way into the film, once it hits it's stride, you see the film for what it really is and you wish you weren't under any obligation to watch crap shows because you started a movie blog. I think it would have been a far more interesting choice to start the film in the same fashion, but keep the protagonist somewhat likable. Make it conflicting to see the woman he adores end up being with the man who is the Great guy, because he is simply the Good Guy, because sometimes that's just how life is. Don't make him into a right bastard that you lose any and all empathy with, just for the sake of throwing the other two unrealistic characters at each other. Anyways...

Add to the vault? No. Sorry, just no. I don't have anything witty to add here.


In case you were curious, here's the trailer for 2009's, The Good Guy.