Director: Bart Freundlich
Starring: Julianne Moore, David Duchovny, Billy Crudup, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Justin Bartha, Eva Mendes

- Reviewed by Vickie

Why do I continue to see Bart Freundlich movies? Don’t get me wrong, they’re all fine on some level and not unwatchable or anything, but all have yet to live up to my expectations walking in. They promise great casts in stories that sound interesting enough, but ultimately they all wind up the same: bland and kind of disappointing overall.

This time around, Freundlich takes a shot at a romantic comedy, and tracks the relationship problems that arise in the lives of two New York City couples. Tom (David Duchovny) and Rebecca (Julianne Moore) are married with kids, and the spark is slowly disappearing from their union. Meanwhile, Rebecca’s slacker younger brother Tobey (Billy Crudup) is reaching an impasse in his seven-year romance with Elaine (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who’s ready to settle down. All four parties are unhappy with their respective situations, and each one embarks on a flawed journey to remedy his or her problems: Tom joins a support group for sex addicts, Rebecca flirts with a younger man (Justin Bartha), Tobey considers reconnecting with a now-married ex (Eva Mendes), and Elaine hooks up with a Euro-trash twit who’s clearly been constructed to be unlikable and disappointingly unbelievable.

So, lies beget infidelity beget more lies beget regret and so on…but who cares? I didn’t believe that any of these couples were ever really passionately in love, so why would it matter if they split up? They’d probably be much happier! Crudup and Gyllenhaal’s characters seem more like buddies than soulmates, and Duchovny and Moore – while more believable – each have better chemistry with their adulterous partners than with each other. The success of the film, one would think, should lie with the audience rooting for the couples to overcome their differences and find their way back to where they belong. But I would have been quite content to see them all go their separate ways.

Maybe it’s a case of trying to keep too many balls in the air. Freundlich populates the cast with so many supporting (and extraneous) characters that there isn’t much time for any of them. Ellen Barkin barely gets three minutes of screen time as an overheated book publisher trying to seduce Elaine, and Mendes – who has great comic timing – is wasted in a thankless vixen role. The four leads all seem to have their characters set on “medium,” with Crudup as the only standout for giving Tobey a little extra oomph.

The story plods along and feels like it was assembled from unoriginal blueprints. The on-again/off-again status of the couples, and the will-they-or-won’t-they-stay-together peaks and valleys of the story, become tiresome fairly early on, and the laughable final 15 minutes feels like it’s been tacked on from a completely different movie.

I went into Trust the Man hoping that it would be great. Or even just very good. I’m sad to report that it was neither, and that I think it may be my final Bart Freundlich film for a while.

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