Maybe purchasing a 13-year-old romantic comedy for $2.99 at a Winn-Dixie grocery store was my first mistake, but my second was watching the movie and expecting a long-lost early 2000s gem.
Before dropping three big ones on A Guy Thing, I had somehow managed to evade ever seeing the mostly forgotten date movie, which was born in a flurry of films of similar pedigree. Starring a knockout trio of ’00s heavyweights Julia Stiles, Selma Blair, and Jason Lee, the movie is undoubtedly right up my alley. On paper, I would have eaten this movie up had it ticked all the right boxes. However, multiple boxes were left un-ticked.
Paul (Lee) is set to marry Karen (Blair) until he meets and hooks up with Becky (Stiles) after his wild bachelor party. If that’s not enough, Becky and Karen are cousins, leading Paul to exert strenuous effort to keep his indecencies on the down low. Sounds like an intriguing time wading through the moral muck of meeting your actual soulmate on the road to the altar, right? Something Borrowed did it rather well, didn’t it? But A Guy Thing didn’t breathe as much air into the characters and the story, leaving it one-note and lifeless.
Honestly, I’m disappointed in A Guy Thing. I remember seeing the DVD on the shelves of Target a decade-plus back and thinking it was an exciting movie I’d watch one day when I was old enough. Finally, that day came and it failed to exceed or even meet my expectations.
As a diehard fanatic of the early 2000s, any movie from that era starring Julia Stiles and Selma Blair, together or separately, is obviously held to a high standard. I mean, their filmographies include 10 Things I Hate About You, Cruel Intentions, Save the Last Dance, and Legally Blonde to name a few. These are some of my favorite movies with dynamic and real characters whose stories are bigger than their romcom genres. So, why couldn’t A Guy Thing live up to its potential?
For starters, the characters were barely rough sketches. Lee’s Paul has no interesting qualities. Maybe that’s what makes him a round character (the plainly ordinary white straight male is a personality type that exists), but his story was boring because he was boring. He was unlikable. He doesn’t even need to be likable, but I couldn’t find one redeeming quality to make me root for him, make me hope he doesn’t have crabs or doesn’t get his ass handed to him by a jacked competitor. He was dreadfully underdeveloped, as were Stiles and Blair’s characters.
I do have to offer A Guy Thing the smallest leniency being a film of 2003. This wasn’t a particularly ripe moment for portrayals of women in romantic comedies (though when some did it well, they did it well). But that’s no excuse to strip Blair’s Karen of any depth, concerning her more with her nuptials than her relationship. And Stiles’ Becky has been painted as the hapless “cool” girl, jumping from job to job and asking guys to buy her a drink. They were stock characters that weren’t fleshed out beyond the initial prototype.
Moreover, I couldn’t hang with the incessant reminder that Paul’s morally ambiguous mission was “a guy thing.” Trying to cover up your affair with your fiancée’s cousin isn’t a “Oh, boys will be boys” scenario. And the fact that most of the men in his life—his best friend, that random guy at that store, etc.—helped him continue his lie because it’s “a guy thing” rang false.
Before the halfway point of the movie, I grew tired of Paul continually having karma smack him in the face for lying to Karen. It felt like a rehashing of Matthew Broderick’s story in Election, except it wasn’t as particularly compelling or funny. I asked myself, “Why can’t he just come clean or not act so damn sketchy?”
It’s because he had feelings for Becky, though it’s never really clear when or why they fell for each other. Perhaps Paul was drawn to Becky’s tendency to challenge him, which isn’t difficult to do since he’s practically a blank slate. But I’d like to think Becky could find a man with more dignity than to cite having a penis as an excuse for his abysmal behavior.
If we're being honest, it’s not a “guy thing” to hide another person’s underwear in the tank of a toilet. It’s not a “guy thing” to feign bowel problems and try to run away from an awkward dinner party. It’s not a “guy thing” to be a coward/raging bonehead/all-around trash bag.
Clearly, I’m mad at these characters, this movie, this story for not being what I thought it would be. What looked of a classic buried deep beneath its brethren lacked momentum and any semblance of a cohesive vibe. Are we a heartfelt romcom or are we a crude R-rated comedy? Thus is the identity crisis A Guy Thing seems to have had with its script, its men, and its feminism.
I’m sure someday I will give A Guy Thing another chance and try to not be blinded by these things that enraged me so. The holes in plot and characterization distracted me and dampened my perception of the movie. Maybe knowing its faults will help me look beyond them and let me truly get into the movie. But, on the other hand, maybe I’ll ignore reason. It is a guy thing, after all.
