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Trust The Man

Romantic comedies have been one of American film's most beloved film staples for generations. It's also a genre that nowadays, even after the genre's famous 'reinventing the wheel' by famed filmmaker Woody Allen in the late 1970's, has become very shopworn and very clichéd. And try as he admirably might, Bart Freundlich's Trust The Man is just that.

The story centers on a two pairs of couples in Manhattan as they reach the dreary stages of mid-life. Tom (David Duchovny) gives up his advertising job to become a stay-at-home dad. The situation, however, leaves Tom wandering as he turns to pornography. Things get worse as he begins having an affair with the mother of one of his son's classmates after his actress wife Rebecca (Freundlich's real-life wife Julianne Moore) resists his constant demands for sex.

Meanwhile, Rebecca's brother and Tom's best friend Tobey (Billy Crudup) is having his own relationship problems as Elaine (Maggie Gyllenhaal), his girlfriend of seven years, desires to settle down with him. However, the immature and also rather infantile Tobey is fearful of the prospect of marriage and raising a family, which causes Elaine to soon question whether her truly perfect mate lies elsewhere.

With Trust The Man, writer-director Bart Freundlich attempts to create a more realistic romantic comedy for the modern movie-going public. However, he does this by merely channeling Woody Allen's signature intellectual, urban, realistic, dialogue-heavy romantic comedy style.

This creates a problem at the start as the style is merely an emulation of much-better-done sophisticated urban romantic comedies. What adds to the problem is Freundlich's script, which is highly flawed.

One flaw is that the male characters are crude and flatly characterized in a way that you can't really identify with their plight on the script alone. The second is that despite Freundlich's efforts to realistically portray Manhattan, his palette in the film is, as is unfortunately typical, limited to only a posh section of it. And third, the script seems painfully underdeveloped as the film wears on, as if he's unsure of where to really go with the story, and it ends in rather ridiculous fashion.

However, Moore, Gyllenhaal and particularly Duchovny and Crudup, who have great chemistry together, help the film tremendously with their first-rate performances. The already very youthful Gyllenhaal's range as a performer also particularly manages to overcome her playing a character years older than she is.

The DVD is dual-sided and presents the film in both its original 2:35:1 anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio and a 1:33:1 pan-and-scan format, with the sound quality in Dolby Surround 5.1.

The DVD also contains plenty of special features. Included on

both sides of the disc is audio commentary with writer-director Bart Freundlich and David Duchovny. It's a consistently engaging and enthusiastic commentary as the two of them, who are longtime friends, manage to be informative, lighthearted, and anecdotal.

The full-screen-only special feature is a featurette titled Real Love: The Making of Trust The Man. It contains spirited and informative interviews about making the film with Freundlich and cast members Crudup, Duchovny, Moore, and Gyllenhaal.

The widescreen-only special feature is deleted scenes with optional audio commentary by Freundlich and Duchovny. The scenes are rather extraneous, but they are rather amusing curiosities and a more-than-worthy inclusion. One praiseworthy note is that on certain deleted scenes, they do credit actors in the scenes that are cut from the final film.

Overall, despites the Freundlich's best efforts, Trust The Man is a rather clichéd, derivative, and indecisive Woody Allen homage. However, the performances of its star cast make the film a worthy rental for fans of any of the film's four performers.

Movie Grade: C
Special Features Grade: B
Overall Grade: C