A Guy Thing

January is a special time for the motion picture industry: A time when the powers that be decide that Americans are least likely to go to the movies and flood the market with films that range from pretty bad to unwatchable. A Guy Thing is one of those latter films. Originally scheduled for release last August, the studio behind the film decided that even in the oppressive heat of summer, they still couldn’t get people into theatres with this one. A Guy Thing telegraphs its mediocrity in its trailer, but the lure of normally good actors like Julia Stiles, Jason Lee, and Selma Blair may prove to be too strong for some. I implore you to resist.

After a “crazy” night of debauchery at his bachelor party, Paul (Mr. Lee) wakes up with a strange woman (Ms. Stiles) in his bed. How does he explain this to his fiancée, Karen (Ms. Blair)? Even after it is established that the pair did not have sex AND the woman is Karen’s cousin Becky, the film still insists on setting Paul up for humiliation after humiliation in its quest for laughs. See Paul get crabs from a toilet seat. See Paul get mugged by Becky’s psycho ex-boyfriend. See Paul squirm as he’s questioned about a pair of women’s underwear found in his toilet tank. It even uses those annoying fantasy sequences where a character is about to do something and imagines the outcome of his act much differently than it turns out.

All of the above cannot describe how awful this film is. I couldn’t have laughed less if it was Meryl Streep dying of cancer in a Lifetime Movie of the Week. For Blair and Stiles, I will chalk this up as an exercise in rent money: They need to pay it, and acting in this piece of crap will do it. However, Lee, an able and capable actor, now has an unwanted 0-2 streak with this film and last September’s Stealing Harvard. One can only hope his role in the upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher will return him to form.

Submitted 26 January 03. Posted 20 February 03.