James Rocchi At The Movies

'Trust The Man'

Review By CBS 5 Film Critic James Rocchi

(CBS 5) Rating: 3 out of 4 stars.

There's a certain type of romantic comedy -- urban, urbane, a little cold-yet-warm -- that we best associate with '70s era Woody Allen or any of Eric Rohmer's films. There is the promise and laughter and peril of young love; there are the kinds of infidelities and betrayals and intimacies than can only come for long-married couples. There is infidelity; there is laughter; there is terrific set design. 'Trust the Man,' the latest film from writer-director Bart Freundlich, is in that mold.

Tom (David Duchovny) and Rebecca (Julianne Moore) are raising two kids; Tom recently left advertising to take care of the little ones, while Rebecca is an actress -- stage and screen, as we're most firmly told). Rebecca's brother Tobey (Billy Crudup) is a slack freelance writer with wispy facial hair who's been with Elaine (Maggie Gyllenhaal) for the past seven years. Tom would like to have more sex with his wife; Rebecca would like more of her husband in general. Elaine wants to find a publisher for her kid's book, get married and have children; Tobey wants … a legal parking space in his neighborhood.

I should not have liked any of these characters -- their smug snappy patter, their tastefully-decorated fantasy apartments, their urban-fantasy lifestyle made possible by well-paying jobs we rarely see them actually do. But something in 'Trust the Man' won me over.

Perhaps it was the occasional moment of real emotion that slipped through the rat-a-tat quips and wacky moments. Perhaps it was the occasional bit of true, knife-sharp humor that cut to the quick of the emotional matters on the table. Either way, I wound up liking it.

And there are serious emotional stakes on the table: Tom drifts into an affair; Elaine throws Tobey out of their apartment, and then out of the relationship. So, when those emotional moments are counter-programmed with Tom's son whacking him in the genitals or Tobey meeting the terrifying folk-singer (James LeGros) Elaine's just chucked out of her bed on what was once Tobey's front stoop, this blend either works for you or it doesn't.

And if it works for you, it's a good bet that the cast was part of the sell. All four leads are well-known-ish indie actors who've flirted with mainstream stardom for years. They've worked with each other before (Duchovny and Moore in Evolution; Moore and Crudup in World Traveler) -- and writer-director Freundlich is Moore's partner and co-parent, so the production is certainly close to home.

But each actor gets to move out of their comfort zone a little, too: Duchovny gets to be scraggly; Moore gets to be a centered mother (and for once let her art imitate her life); Gyllenhall gets to be gamine and sexy, and Crudup gets to make an absolute ass out of himself.

Tom's found out and thrown out, but Rebecca's wary of her own sympathies and of playing into Tom's self-loathing: "He's in that overly-sweet hangdog phase where I could set him on fire and he'd thank me for it." Tobey finally grows up and realizes he wants Elaine just as she's started dating again. Tom enrolls in a sex-addict's 12-step program (and gets the biggest laugh in the film with just one prop.) And Elaine receives an offer from a publisher, but it's not the offer she had in mind.

It's in the flailing, frantic finale that 'Trust the Man' gets into the big, happy ending more normally reserved for big-budget romantic comedies with an ex-Saturday Night Live star in them. With mockable Frenchmen and clumsy ushers in pursuit before not one, but two public declarations of love before a crowd, 'Trust the Man's' finish has its foot on the cliché pedal all the way down to the floor. But a lot of big, dumb romantic comedies from name actors and major studios coast by on charm and charisma; why can't a small, dumb romantic comedy from lesser-known talents and micro-studios get the chance to do the same thing?

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