A Guy Thing movie poster
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A Guy Thing movie poster

A Guy Thing Movie Review

Jason Lee stars in another relatively unforgettable comedy called A Guy Thing, which starts out great and then falls flat on its face about twenty minutes later. Julia Stiles and Selma Blair also star as Lee's love interests.

A Guy Thing is about a man who wakes up the morning after his bachelor party with a beautiful woman (Julia Stiles), but she isn't his fiancée (Selma Blair). He quickly gets her out of the way, but come time for the family get-together, it turns out that she is his fiancée's cousin. So, for the rest of the movie, he tries to hide the fact from his fiancée while at the same tries hiding from her cousin's psychotic ex-boyfriend, who thinks that they are having an affair. Of course, like all romantic comedies, things turn out all right, at least in terms of storyline. That same statement cannot be said for the movie itself.

First off, A Guy Thing is pretty predictable. Sure, all romantic comedies are predictable, but this one is annoyingly so, especially since it easy to guess even the most quirkiest of things that happen. For instance, it is quite obvious that Lee is going to dump Blair and end up with Stiles, while Blair is going to end up with Lee's brother (Thomas Lennon), who lusts after her the entire movie. Was that a spoiler? No, because it is apparent that that is what is going to happen from minute one, or even from just the previews.

If the predictability factor isn't enough to deter anyone from watching this movie, there are plenty of other flaws to point out. After a while, the movie just becomes cheesy. Lee does the typical thing any logical man who suspects that he slept with his fiancée's cousin a week before the wedding would do, like spit out ludicrous lies that no realistic person would ever use, climb out bathroom windows to avoid a potentially devastating situation that could not be avoided forever anyway, and fall in love with this new woman just because she is a little more free spirited. To make matters worse, the screenwriter threw in a subplot about Stiles' ex-boyfriend, who of course is psychotic. This whole storyline goes nowhere, and ultimately brings down the entire film.

Furthermore, the entire ending is awful. Like so many romantic comedies have done before, the movie basically climaxes in the wedding chapel, where Lee proceeds to dump Blair at the altar. First off, it should be noted that Blair does not play a bitch at all in this movie; she is beautiful, smart and nice, and doesn't deserve to be dumped at the altar. Lee is also really nice, and even if he had reservations, probably wouldn't dump his bride-to-be at the last moment. It would also be interesting to look up actual statistics as to how many people are dumped during their actual wedding; the number is pretty low.

Of course, Lee says that Blair isn't for her, and she starts to cry, but then Lee's brother steps in and asks her to marry her. She, being a typical fragile-minded female, says yes and runs off. Lee then chases Stile in a taxi cab and kisses her. Spoiler? No, of course not. It's pretty damn obvious, and incredibly cheesy.

It is also worth noting that Seattle does not have any toll bridges, which should be considered a major flaw to any Seattle resident that dares watch the movie.

A Guy Thing is frustrating because it starts off really funny, and then only has sporadically decent jokes for the rest of its running time. The characters do so many stupid and pointless things that everything just becomes tedious after a while. Lee holds his own for the most part, but he needs to stick to scripts that don't just fall back on slapstick cheesiness when the screenwriter runs out of ideas.

Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.

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