The Good Guy (2009)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

To me, this movie is perfection.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Moderately entertaining romance drama set in the world of Wall Street finance. It isn't great and I can see why this movie didn't quite make it in cinemas but it's quite an okay watch on cable. Good points: Firstly the way the story unfolds and characters personalities are revealed is quite interesting and watchable. The romance is quite subtle. Alexis Bledel is okay though a bit girlish looking for a young adult. Liked the outcome. The casting is good. Bryan Greenberg is well cast as the more sensitive love interest. Scott Porter is okay as the wall street hot shot - liked the way his character played out. Andrew McCarthy is good as the hard boss. The faults: What was clichéd about the script is how Wall Street people are portrayed as hard drinking womanizing schmoozing and procuring etc. If you worked hard you wouldn't have the energy to party like that. And in reality the actually don't. Worth a watch but not a must see.

I have to start my comments with my observations about the lead actor here, Alexis Bledel. I really like her, she was perfect as a high school student in 'Gilmore Girls', she seems like a very sweet person, and very attractive. But she simply is a lousy actor. In this movie, and others, where she has been in scenes with other 20-something females, the others are always more convincing than she is. I wish she would either improve her acting skills or quit trying to handle lead roles. In one scene she asks "Have you ever been in a hot air balloon." Easy question. I asked my wife, "What did she say?" We replayed that 2 more times, neither of us could understand her. We had to put on the subtitles. There is no excuse for such poor enunciation.To the movie. Here she is Beth Vest, a successful young professional in New York, who has met a really nice guy Scott Porter as Tommy Fielding, with a successful career as a Wall Street banker. Beth begins to think maybe Tommy is "the one", but she gets offered a promotion, in San Francisco. What to do?Meanwhile the new guy at the bank, Bryan Greenberg as Daniel Seaver, seems to be an absolute zero when it comes to socializing, and especially women. Tommy gives seemingly all his free time trying to improve Daniel, even going so far as to sending him to a bookstore to meet women, encouraging him by cell phone. As fate would have it, Beth walks in and Daniel is smitten, not knowing who she is. Eventually Beth, Tommy, and Daniel all get into a romantic triangle of sorts. Andrew McCarthy looks pretty good for almost 50, who can forget him in 'Mannequin'? Here he is appropriately named Cash, and as the boss he is fond of telling Tommy and all the others, "Your job is to make money for me." Except for the excessively foul mouth, he is pretty good in this role. The rest of the guys are caricatures of young Wall Street professionals, who work the phones to make deals during the day, and spend nights boozing and chasing women. Overall a pretty poor movie, even if there had been a better actor in the role of Beth. SPOILERS: Tommy was not what he first appeared to the audience, and to Beth. While he came across as sincere, he always had several other young women, and one prostitute, just a call away. When Beth found out what was going on she quickly severed ties and it appeared that she and Daniel were well on the way to a solid relationship. Well 'solid' by Hollywood standards.

"The Good Guy" is a relationship drama. You would be forgiven if you assumed it was yet another twenty-something girl trying to sort out her love life and career in a romantic comedy. You would be forgiven for thinking that, but you would also be wrong. It's actually better than that.The film is driven by three characters, all of them completely fleshed-out and three-dimensional. Not one of them is central, but all of them individually and triangularly. The film continuously surprises in very subtle ways. The characters are better written than first appears, and even when the film tells you the characters will surprise you, it still comes as a surprise.I was expecting a film about Beth - a very standard, trying to find herself story. What makes it better than that is the fact that it's a drama - I am hard-pressed to name a similar film without comedy undertones or overtones. This is a drama - dark and sombre."The Good Guy" may not be for everybody but it is a good twenty-somethings relationship story told through drama instead of comedy. In the film, Beth complains about a novel that she read where half-way through the narrator turns out to be unreliable. "What's the point of that?" she asks. Daniel responds "Well isn't that life? It surprises you." Indeed it does. "The Good Guy" may be just like life, dramatic, and it surprises you.

I've noticed here on IMDb when people review a movie they concentrate on the technicalities too much. which fine, but people like myself don't really care much for that.Anyway, this movie is very enjoyable, especially if you relate to some of the situations mentioned in the movie. Like one of the comments said, don't even try to understand the wall street guys conversations lol.Bryan Greenberg is awesome as he is in one tree hill, although here he plays a guy that doesn't even know how to say a single word to a girl (I think that's enjoyable in itself).Long story short, I liked this movie. I give it 6/10.