Trust the Man (2005)

this is one of the funniest movies i have seen in a while. great for guys (women, also) who are looking for a movie that's intelligent, too. i don't know what movie that first reviewer was watching, but i thought the cameos were hilarious, and that all the actors were totally believable. the soundtrack is great as well and has some very cool artists i hadn't heard of before. i think that the reason the movie is so good is because the writing is so good and tuned in. director bart freundlich definitely understands the underbelly of relationships. i imagine he goes through a lot of it himself. the relationships between the two main couples is very believable. i loved this movie.

Fmovies: I missed this one at last year's Toronto International Film Fesival, but have just seen a preview prior, presumably to its Toronto release.

For me live-in lovers Billy Crudup and Maggie Gyllenhall delivered sparkling performances far more sympatici than the other couple -- the married pair of Julianne Moore and David Duchovny who also did their job well, but it's the antics of the former two that keep this film alive and moving.

Without wising a spoiler on you, I was in a genuine state of suspense over whether or not this movie would have a feel good ending.

The behaviour of these four characters is not really rooted in reality -- who expects this of a comedy? -- but their quirks and good qualities are sufficiently close to it speak for the times.

There were several good laughs and a couple of good running jokes which didn't pall on me.

I found Trust the Man a likable effort which should prove popular in spite of what I know will be some critics' objections for occasional in-your-face crudities

The only thing this movie has going for it is the acting talent. There is no story, no arc, and the characters take an incredibly shallow view on relationships. Just like the other 2 B. Freundlich movies, it is all talk and no substance. Boring and has nothing to say. Tries way too hard to be funny, and all the forced jokes just fall flat. Since IMDb is forcing me to write 10 full lines, I will continue by saying that Julianne Moore is luminous as always, David Duchovny is very likable, Billy Crudup is over-the-top and annoying (scenery chewing much?) and Maggie Gyllenhaal is wonderful. She is the best thing in the movie and rises above the weak material.

Trust the Man fmovies. This film seems to seek only to be exactly what it seems to be on first viewing, and manages that superbly. And all this is is just one more 'relationship' movie, showing the problems faced in modern life by 'trendy' couples in New York.

The film portrays two couples living in New York, a brother and sister and their respective partners, who have the typical problems with each other. One couple has Julianne Moore and David Duchovny in a marriage gone stale (unimaginatively shown through the medium of having Moore's character repetitively refuse her husband sex), and the other has Maggie Gyllenhaal desperate to further both her career and relationship with a boyfriend who is terrified to commit, apparently because of a fear of dying.

Not exactly original is it. Throughout the movies I just found it to be simply leaning on the stable stereotypes and ideas of every other film of this genre before it, but with little or no effort to flesh out the characters to an interesting level, something vital in a film of this kind. None of the characters in this piece are interesting, and you just cannot bring yourself to care about them. I really expected more from Duchovny and Moore, who we know can do this sort of thing well if they try, and the only one here who vaguely manages to come out of this well is Gyllenhaal, who somehow manages to work through the material and give Elaine a level of naivety and a hope to improve on her lot to make us root for her.

This is where I felt the movie, like many others like it, missed the point; these characters have problems, they're not happy and their relationships are falling apart but they don't seem to want to bother doing anything about it. In fact 'helping yourself' is actively mocked. Tom and Rebecca go to marriage counselling once a year as a joke to wind up their guidance councillor. When Tom joins a sex addicts group (apparently if you're wife refuses to have sex with you ever, and tells you this to your face, if you still want sex yourself it means you're a sex addict. No one wants sex once you have children! What a freak!) we just get shown an amusing group of weirdos with stupid and amusing fetishes involving power tools.

What this shows to me is just one more love story of how New York (once again shown as a seeming example of the epitome of American society) drains people and makes them miserable and alone. How everyone is miserable, but trying to improve your lot is pointless and laughable, so just get over it and you'll get the inevitable happy ending where both couples get what they wanted from the start, not because they've actually changed or started liking each other, but because we've got the end of the film and need to wrap it up for that cathartic happy ending that the audience wants. The moral: don't bother trying to change your life if it's not working, it'll all work out in the end if you pretend your happy.

I rented this movie because of the great cast. I finished it amazed that any established actor would have accepted a role in this thing based on the script, which was lame, unoriginal, and mildly offensive in its attempts at humor. Rarely has a battle of the sexes been so predictable. The story was filled with stereotypes and stereotypical behavior. The men came off as overgrown children. In any real world, their female counterparts wouldn't have put up with them for two weeks, much less years. It was painful to watch a game cast try to breath some humanity and originality into these characters. Moments intended as funny or telling merely smelled bad. Woody Allen covered the same ground years ago in a much better way. Try Hannah And Her Sisters. This particular would-be Woody update added nothing to the genre.