Critic Reviews

It has smart characters, and is wise about the ones who try to tame their intelligence by acting out.

Like its characters, Good Guy is sharp, fun and pleasant to behold, and its recreational, apartment and workplace locales are appropriately slick and showy.

The movie’s confident performances and its eye and ear for detail make The Good Guy a satisfying insider’s snapshot of a shark tank.

The result is a more-clever-than-most window into modern urban yuppie mating rituals, tracking just how tough it is to keep a grip on love and the corporate ladder at the same time.

Any movie that name-checks Ford Maddox Ford's novel "The Good Soldier" is OK by me, and clearly writer-director Julio DePietro has made a careful study of Ford's crafty, illusory narrative.

One by one, each scene goes slack as the script struggles with Screenwriting 101 problems like who the main character is and what he wants -- not to mention why any of us should care in the first place.

DePietro struggles to reconcile the perceived demands of the romantic comedy genre (though his film is more bittersweet than most) and the tang and hustle and detail of real life.

DePietro is no cynic, and he means well--but he also means to corner the coveted "Dear John" demographic, which, in turn, means that The Good Guy suffers from the dreary want of imagination about the specificity of twentysomething life that has sunk so many other specimens of this battered genre.

Such passé testosterone worship might have been passable if the filmmaking weren’t so amateurish--every emotional exchange is accompanied by insipid, high-volume pop songs--and the film’s self-satisfied chest-thumping didn’t extend to its creator as well.

With its cash-flashing men and dirty-talking women, the movie already feels dated. But it wouldn't have been much fun five years ago, either.