I really liked Trust the Man but I don’t know that I’d argue it was a good movie. Oh, it was an entertaining movie (but wait, don’t good movies entertain?) but it still feels like it was really flawed which again makes it tough to argue that it was a good flick overall. Crap. Why am I arguing with myself so much? I’m going to make peace with me and instead give you some solid reasons why you should make this a date night, or, if you’re horribly and painfully alone in the world, just a regular old painful night out.
What Trust the Man is (or be) is about 30 sketch comedies all rolled up into a script. Next, add two montages where some real hard core feelings and emotions go down and top it all off with an ending. That’s what they did here and yet somehow it really worked for me. Why? Well each of the sketch bits was truly funny. No, they didn’t grow the characters or really further the plot but they always ended with me laughing. It was weird the first ten minutes of the film, after three sketches or so when I was wondering where they were going with it. It was only once I realized that they weren’t going anywhere, they were just sticking with making me laugh that I truly found comfort in the method. After that I sat back and enjoyed it, it’s a surface level comedy that doesn’t ask too much of an audience, it just delivers an enjoyable 100 minutes.
I don’t know why I’m even bothering with the plot as I just spent a paragraph mentioning there isn’t one but here goes nothing. David Duchovny plays the husband of Julianne Moore. She’s an actress. Her brother is Billy Crudup (in the movie) and he’s dating Maggie Gyllenhaal (probably only in the movie unless she’s a cheater). Maggie and Julianne are friends. The relationships go through trials, but not tribulations, and there are laughs all around. Plot synopsis complete.
What doesn’t work in this one are the opening credits which are long and particularly vain (oh yeah, I CARE who the executive producer is real bad, please waste two minutes of my life) and the montages. The montages are straight out of Team America satire, after all the laughs are through the music comes on and we learn that people really care after all. C’mon man, get back to the sketch comedy that was working so well!
These slight factors don’t really dampen the experience though. You’ll laugh and giggle and perhaps have a nervous twitter or two. The dialogue really works and all of the jokes pertain and skewer everything we know about relationships and people in general. All of the characters are somewhat flawed, and there isn’t a true bad or good guy, just four lead actors who know what they’re doing coupled with good writing. I have to recommend it, it’s in my code of honesty, but I don’t want you coming back saying it didn’t change your life. It wasn’t supposed to. Save life changing for when you schedule a music montage for yourself. Everyone knows that’s when the real magic happens.
