Lovable Losers Become Less and Less Lovable

David Duchovny and Billy Crudup play the two men whom it’s hard to trust — or, frankly, like — in Bart Freundlich’s unmemorable dramedy, “Trust the Man.” Rather like the director’s indifferent 1997 debut, “The Myth of Fingerprints,” it’s a hollow work. All the requisite genteel markers are there — handsome actors in parallel relationship woes, comfortable bourgeois New York milieus, glibness always at the ready — but there’s not much going on inside, and little for the actors to develop.Tom (Mr. Duchovny) and Toby (Mr. Crudup) quip, slack, lust, and whine their way through their respective relationships. Tom, an ad man who must have quit in a fit of the blahs, minds the kids and surfs porn sites while his movie-star wife Rebecca (Julianne Moore) auditions for a theater role. Less smug and more abrasive, Toby has strung along his girlfriend Elaine (Maggie Gyllenhaal) for eight years, ignoring her overtures to marriage and parenthood. “A teenager with a checking account” is how Rebecca, who is Toby’s sister, describes him, though she might as well be talking about Tom, too.The two ne’er-do-wells get their comeuppance in due time. Elaine eventually tires of waiting for Toby to get a clue and dumps him on a windy street. Tom goes through the oh-so-harrowing learning experience of an affair with a hot divorcee (Dagmara Dominczyk). Along the way, everyone eats well, with scenes filling a Zagat’s worth of the city’s restaurants.For Tom and Toby, their dalliances and days in the early-30s wilderness are played for laughs, except for the odd introspective moment that’s quickly cut off. For Rebecca and Elaine, who cling to their stake in these twits (and who appear to be the only ones gainfully employed), it’s all a bit more serious, with Ms. Gyllenhaal especially giving her all. These guys may be losers, the women might say, but they’re our losers.I’m practically quoting the movie’s clichéd finale. Predictably, pursuant to the men doing something goofily romantic, the women forgive them (at the climax of a play at Lincoln Center, no less). Tom’s redemption at least comes out of a tradition of shamed men being welcomed back into the fold, but Elaine’s reacceptance of Toby is downright mystifying and even a little insulting.Her ridiculous new boyfriend to that point, a pseudo-intellectual with a Borat-like accent, is one of Mr. Freundlich’s unfortunate menagerie of walking one-liners and perilous quick sketches. There’s the aggressive black club promoter who has married Toby’s old college flame (Eva Mendes), the predatory books editor (Ellen Barkin) who all but jumps Elaine after a lunch, a fatuous free-spirited singer (James LeGros), and, of course, Tom’s yummy-mummy liaison in fur trim.True, it’s supposed to be a comedy, but making every character apart from the leads sketchy also smacks of laziness. Even having Rebecca and Toby as siblings feels like a crutch for establishing closeness between two characters. It’s a shortcut the director also deployed in “Myth,” along with the device of front loading character horniness. And there’s something slightly off about Ms. Moore, Mr. Freundlich’s wife, who again plays (as in “Myth,” but to less effect) an uptight woman who must fend off a nutty flirter.You get the sense that Mr. Freundlich goes about as far as “recognition” when it comes to creating his characters. But worse is how he doesn’t take his female characters seriously, despite making a big show of some tough-stand dialogue. All their concerns ultimately melt away, like mirages concealing Tom and Toby’s essential worthiness at heart. Do the guys learn a lesson at least? Mostly that they’ve still got it: Near the end, Tom counts the seconds to meeting his wife for a bathroom quickie on an airplane. That’s shortly after a flight attendant starts to flirt with him before realizing he’s married — the best of both worlds.“Trust the Man” sets up some of its comic bits adequately, though some are a bit easy, especially Tom’s fabulism in a sex-addict support group. But Ms. Gyllenhaal’s beautifully bittersweet restaurant monologue about life, babies, and everything is worth a thousand of the explicit comic throwaways (Toby tailing his psychiatrist, Tom getting whacked in the crotch by his kid).Mostly, though, Mr. Duchovny sets the keynote, nasally deadpanning line readings as if he could wander off set at any moment. For the maestro of mumble, it’s another day at the office, but watching the vagaries of “Trust the Man,” you might sympathize.

Lovable Losers Become Less and Less Lovable

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