The Good Guy Film 2010
This was the official website for the 2009 film, The Good Guy, romantic "dramedy".
Content is from the site's 2009 -2010 archived pages as well as other outside sources.
Release date:February 19, 2010
(limited)
Studio:Roadside Attractions
Director:Julio DePietro
MPAA Rating:R (for pervasive language and some sexual content)
Screenwriter:Julio DePietro
Starring:Alexis Bledel, Scott Porter, Bryan Greenberg, Anna Chlumsky, Aaron Yoo, Andrew McCarthy
THE GOOD GUY - Official US Theatrical Trailer
Plot Summary:
Ambitious young Manhattanite and urban conservationist Beth (Alexis Bledel) wants it all: a good job, good friends, and a good guy to share the city with. Of course that last one is often the trickiest of all. In the new romantic dramedy, Beth falls hard for Tommy (Scott Porter), a sexy, young Wall Street hot-shot. But just as everything seems to be falling into place, complications arise in the form of Tommy's sensitive and handsome co-worker Daniel (Bryan Greenberg). Beth soon learns that the game of love in the big city is a lot like Wall Street - high risk, high reward and everybody has an angle.
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REVIEWS
THE GOOD GUY
*** Roger Ebert | March 3, 2010
"The Good Guy" creates the interesting notion that Wall Street trading involves a gang of hard-partying goofs who pass their days playing video games with our money. They trade too fast to know much about the stocks they're selling -- and besides, they mostly trade funds and may only vaguely know how the portfolios are weighted
That at least is the impression given by "The Good Guy," which contains not a moment in which any trader knows much about the fundamentals of a stock, but much about the dance of the numbers on a screen and the mind games he's playing with other traders. At the end of the day, all that matters is the score. Well, I guess that's the way it works.
At Morgan & Morgan, no relation to J.P. Morgan or Morgan Stanley, we meet a team of traders bossed by the legendary Cash (Andrew McCarthy). His team leader is Tommy (Scott Porter), who's making money hand over fist while leading the pack on sorties into bars that have a high babe count. These guys get drunk and play adolescent games and plow through conquests and keep laughing so it doesn't get quiet. There is charm in being 17, and pathos in being 27 and acting as if you're 17.
The crew includes Shakespeare (Andrew Stewart-Jones), a black guy with a British accent who may realize but doesn't care that any babe impressed by a British accent belongs on "Jaywalking." There's Steve-O (Aaron Yoo), master trader. And there's the new guy, Daniel (Bryan Greenberg), who, odd as it may seem, prefers not to horse around but stay home, fix some dinner and read a good novel. You know, maybe by Dickens, who many people don't know is about as much fun as any novelist who ever lived.
The section's hot shot bails out to join another firm, and Cash orders Tommy to fill his chair. On a hunch, he promotes Daniel. Everyone including Daniel is disbelieving. Under the delusion that a star trader must party hard and conquer the dollies, Tommy takes Daniel into the field for training; the 40-Year-Old Virgin becomes a 27-Year-Old Reader.
During this process, Daniel meets Beth (Alexis Bledel), Tommy's girlfriend. Beth isn't precisely Tommy's type; she belongs to a book club. Tommy is like one of those guys who might read if the library weren't always closed. Beth is a serious Green and believes Tommy's line that he is, too, but he has a line for every girl and is a serious liar. Daniel observes this dynamic.
Young men, let your old dad here impart some advice. If a woman has a choice of a man who makes sacks of money on the trading floor and a man who likes to stay home at night reading Lolita, and she's more attracted to the reader, choose that woman. She needs to pass one more test: Does she believe (a) Lolita is a sex novel, or (b) it's one of the greatest works of modern literature? Find that out on the second date. If she answers (b), there's your girl.
"The Good Guy" could have been just a dumb comedy, but actually it has a nice feel to it. It looks carefully at a lifestyle many people might thoughtlessly envy. The writer-director, Julio DePietro, is a former trader from Chicago, and convinces us he knows that world. I hasten to add that I know some traders, who are nice guys. I also add that I would trade the same way the guys the movie do, because your clients care less about how much money they'll retire with than how rich they'll be tomorrow. Investing myself, I've trusted value guys over performance. That, and buying Apple just because I loved Macs, has turned out all right.
Readers may pick up on the clue that the title and some of the story are inspired by Ford Madox Ford's novel The Good Soldier. It opens with a famous line that makes it impossible to stop reading: This is the saddest story I have ever heard. Tommy's story is another one.
I keep drifting off course. Will you like "The Good Guy"? I think you might. It has smart characters, and is wise about the ones who try to tame their intelligence by acting out. And Beth and her friends are the women all these guys should be so lucky as to deserve
TOMATOMETER: CRITICS 35% | AUDIENCE 30%
Mar 4, 2010 | Rating: 1.5/4
Wesley Morris Boston Globe Top Critic
The Good Guy
It’s not that easy being green - or good
Beth (Alexis Bledel) is a conservationist who is seeing a pair of bankers: one arrogant, one square. (Walter Thomson/Roadside Attractions)
Were it smarter or more entertaining or simply better made, “The Good Guy’’ could have been a decent anthropological survey of the Wall Street wilderness. The scheming, the starch, the self-regard. It instead wants to be a romantic drama. That’s a mistake. For that you would need high stakes, shameless acting, and the sense that love means something more than falling for a banker because he, too, likes “Pride and Prejudice.’’ “The Good Guy’’ sits several rungs lower. It’s network television drama, starring actors best known for their TV work and full of the petty gripes and mild worries of characters who really have nothing compelling to worry about.
It’s tough to tell this movie from “Men in Trees,’’ “One Tree Hill,’’ “October Road,’’ “Raising the Bar,’’ or “The Deep End,’’ shows with young people trying to figure out their lives. That’s the flaccid gist of “The Good Guy.’’ Beth (Alexis Bledel, “Gilmore Girls’’) likes two men. Tommy (Scott Porter, “Friday Night Lights’’) makes a lot of money at an investment bank. Daniel (Bryan Greenberg, “October Road’’) works with Tommy, but he likes technology and women who do more than hope bankers pick them up. Which man will she wind up with? Who cares?
Beth and Tommy just started dating, but because he’s seeing other people, he’s rarely around and permits her to spend time with Daniel because Daniel is so square. Porter would actually be OK in a character study about a sociopathic moneyman whose high is picking up women. He’s corrosively arrogant - which is not to say he’s interesting.
Presumably to shake things up, Beth is a conservationist. It’s a line of work that rarely comes into play. She and Tommy never fight about the green industries he’s lucratively betting against. She and Daniel never bond over the joys of composting. Although all those shots of her just sitting in Central Park or at her kitchen table suggest that a pitiful amount of imaginative screenwriting is being conserved.
While Beth waits for the phone to ring and we wait for Tommy to overreact to Daniel’s friendship with Beth, men in nice shirts sit in front of computer screens, talk about money, and go out to drink and pick up women. The truth is that there are very few ways, in our current socioeconomic climate, to create conscionable young capitalists.
When Tommy and his coworkers compete for phone numbers, it’s like watching a CNBC nature special. When Tommy drags Daniel to Greenwich Village for a makeover, it’s odd, since Tommy is just as generically dressed as any guy who spills his drink on you - worse actually. But this movie, written and directed by Julio DePietro, seems unaware of how obnoxious and dull these men are. Otherwise, we’d be spending more time with Beth in eco-ville. As it turns out we’re better off. Bledel is emotionally monochromatic, and Beth’s friends are man junkies.
Their book club features very little book talk (for what it’s worth, Humbert Humbert is described as a hopeless romantic) and a lot of drooling over Daniel. As it happens, Greenberg is the only thing to recommend about the movie. Fortunately, since he’s currently starring in a similar but much better new HBO show, “How to Make It in America,’’ I can recommend that instead.
Review: 'The Good Guy'
The film deals with hearts and bonds (the stock market and the emotional kind) in the competitive environment of Wall Street.
Betsy Sharkey Los Angeles Times Top Critic
Feb 19, 2010 | Rating: 3/5
Drawing on his stint at a Chicago investment firm, DePietro creates characters, dialogue and situations that feel authentic, which makes the film relevant in unexpected ways, though not as deeply as you hope he'll do in the future.
If you've ever wondered whether it is possible for a fast-track Wall Street player to have a heart, "The Good Guy" makes a run at answering that question, spending some quality time at the intersection of stock traders and romantic bonds.
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.
The film stars Alexis Bledel as Beth, the good girl stranded on that dangerous corner. Scott Porter, excellent as the paralyzed former football star in "Friday Night Lights," is her hot broker/hot boyfriend Tommy, and Bryan Greenberg, who was adorably sexy as Uma Thurman's young lover and Meryl Streep's son in the little-seen "Prime," portrays the new guy on Tommy's trading team who might be falling for Beth too.
With that triangle as his base in this promising first feature, writer-director Julio DePietro sets about connecting the dots so we can follow the shifting alliances, debts, friendships and betrayals that pile up like overdue bills. In the process, he does a decent job of keeping the clichés that tend to smother romances like this mostly at bay.
Drawing on his stint at a Chicago investment firm, DePietro creates characters, dialogue and situations that feel authentic, which makes the film relevant in unexpected ways, though not as deeply as you hope he'll do in the future. The filmmaker's better with the boys, capturing Wall Street life as a macho blood sport with its win-at-all-cost mind-set, whether it's a dart game after work or a multimillion-dollar deal.
One of the more unsettling moments is a game the guys play, a sort of high-tech musical chairs, in which the last to press the buzzer when the music stops gets hit with an electric jolt. It's tough to decide what's worse, the pain of the shock, the perverse pleasure everyone else gets watching or that it's absolutely believable.
Shot for about $10 million, the film's extensive use of locations around Manhattan, mostly begged and borrowed, gives it a richer look than you might think given its modest means. That DePietro takes his time letting us get to know the characters comes as another unexpected pleasure, staying with a defense of "Pride and Prejudice" at Beth's book club for example, rather than hurrying off in fear of boring us with a brief philosophical excursion.
The film is interested in that slice of the city that is young, affluent but not yet rich, a world in which the more serious and the shallow are still figuring each other out. Tommy is the kind of guy whom success comes to naturally. He always seems to know just how to play the moment, whether he's undertaking a Pygmalion transformation of Greenberg's Daniel into a player or sleuthing out a secluded garden that feels like Tuscany to soften Beth's disappointment that a trip to Italy's been canceled.
Since this is about Wall Street and love, there's more than one roller coaster to ride, and sometimes it's difficult to tell which one DePietro favors. The movie opens as Tommy's hit bottom on the love front. He's outside Beth's apartment, drenched by a downpour, trying to talk his way back into her building, and her heart. From that point, we flash back six weeks as piece by piece the filmmaker plays around with how Tommy turned up all wet and whether he is a good guy or not.
Bledel, best known for her bookish goodness in "The Gilmore Girls," is never asked to step outside of that comfort zone, which leaves the love story in need of some edge and the rest of us wondering if she'll ever be able to step into more grown-up roles. The better triangle turns out to be Porter, Greenberg and Wall Street, where much more than other people's money is always on the line and someone is sure to get hurt.
Cash Poor
By Michael Koresky | February 17, 2010 / http://www.reverseshot.org
Whatever suspense Julio DePietro’s The Good Guy seems to think it’s generating is predicated upon the supposedly surprising twist that its central Wall Street wannabe tycoon is not, in fact, a standup guy. Though all of the details of his cretinous behavior come as a slap in the face to the film’s central looking-for-love character, Beth (Alexis Bledel), it’s doubtful they’ll pull the rug out from under any viewer who may have previously seen a film about hotshot traders fast-talking whilst pressing a phone to each ear—or indeed anyone who may have previously seen a film. The bullish dude in question (who’s decidedly not the “good guy” of the title) is Tommy (Scott Porter), whose adorable overbite and gym-toned torso conceal a sexually dissatisfied, little lost boy who underhandedly takes his professional aggression out on women and coworkers.
Though Tommy’s loutishness is clear from the beginning (thanks, perhaps, to something in Porter’s blank stare, which convincingly reeks of privilege and which, for desperate lack of a better analogy, can be called Mark-Paul Gosselaar-esque), the film devises a pointless flashback structure and a misguided, puzzlingly intermittent voice-over from Tommy to lead us off the scent. First seen sorrowful and seemingly repentant in the rain, begging for understanding from a blase, unmoved Beth, Tommy is at first The Good Guy‘s nominal protagonist. After all, the likeability factor is relative, depending on who’s watching; those who get off on watching cameras whip and rush around investment bankers’ offices while hot-tempered guys bark and cajole each other might find themselves on Tommy’s side, especially when he finds himself dressed down by his swaggering, nut-munching boss, played by an appropriately supercilious Andrew McCarthy, reduced to shouting things like, “Where the fuck is my latte?!” Meanwhile, Beth, a good-hearted urban conservationist (her profession naturally placed in complete contrast to Tommy’s), has doubts, but besides the occasional book club party, also seems to have few interests other than finding the right man to settle down with.
Enter Bryan Greenberg’s Daniel, Tommy’s new protege who’s clearly not cut from the same cloth as the rest of the sexist scamps at the office. A former ROTC grad with limited bullshitting skills and an alarming inability to tell dirty jokes, Daniel is a slime-free fish out of water. Soon enough, Tommy is giving the inoffensively handsome Daniel an attitudinal and wardrobe makeover, which only makes him more confident when he finds himself attracted to Beth, who in turn finds his reserved non-piggish behavior so charming that she invites him to her heretofore ladies-only reading group. Inhabiting the same basic role as did Hugh Dancy in The Jane Austen Book Club (a comparison that would make many of the characters in The Good Guy queasy), Greenberg sits on Beth’s couch with his knees pressed childishly close together as he awkwardly spouts meta pearls of wisdom about Lolita like, “You can’t trust the narrator… it’s like real life.”
If The Good Guy is thus reflective of real life, it’s a reality in which posters shouting “Beware of sharks!” show up at bookstores (in center frame) as warnings to wayward girls. “It feels like a war zone here sometimes,” a character at one point opines about dating in New York City, but as depicted in DePietro’s sparkling, spacious Manhattan apartments inhabited by heedless money men, it seems more like a joyride, however joyless.
This article originally appeared on indieWIRE.
IMDb Review
Bro-Approved
31 March 2010 | by WHYeat
The Good Guy stars Alexis Bledel, who is synonymous with "girly". Having a long successful run on Gilmore Girls and starring in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants it's hard to imagine her starring in a non-chick flick. Of course if Adam Sandler can do "drama", then I wouldn't put it past her. Anyhow, although Alexis dominates half of the movie poster I'd say the movie was less than half about her character, Beth. Beth serves as the center around which Tom (Scott Porter) and Daniel (Bryan Greenberg) are forced to orbit and eventually collide.
Tom is a Wall Street champ and Daniel becomes somewhat of a protégé. From fashion tips to stock tips they bond. In a book store, Daniel is coached – more like egged on – to approach a attractive girl, who turns out to be Tom's girlfriend, Beth. Bros before hos? What do you think? The movie has the typical clichés: A "book club", which serves as a female support slash male bashing group and a band of bar-hopping girl-hunting bros. You have your typical run-of-the-mill chick flick situations and resolutions. Not much surprise here. The only surprise is that this isn't much of a romantic comedy, so don't think "at least it might funny". It throws a decent jab, but doesn't finish with a right cross, a uppercut, or even a dirty kick to the groin.
Men: Go with low expectations and you won't hate it. Bro-Approved.
YouTube Trailer Comments
Allen MacCannell |
(edited) Entertaining propaganda won't help "Nice Guys" © overcome their affliction. Sure, like the "good guy" here, I had traveled the world on active duty and read lots of books including everything Jane Austen ever wrote (as in this story), but, at first, none of that was important socially unless a Bad Boy © helped me get introduced to someone he knew (as in this story). The character in this movie never grew out of his need to have other guys introduce him to women and the producer/screenwriters seem to have been clueless about how that's not cool. In real life in most places, there would be no sisterhood all joining forces to reject a Bad Boy all at the same time, leaving the field open to the shy nice guy who waits around for women to call him and can't even ask female strangers for a napkin without breaking out in hives. That's a Hollywood gimmick like in "Revenge of the Nerds."
I once talked to a guy who was having trouble talking to female strangers. I showed him how it wasn't hard to do by meeting someone nice and exchanging numbers with her. I then introduced him and her with the idea that she would help him meet someone else. But she called me the next day to tell me that my "friend" had bad-mouthed me in order to get her to like him instead. She asked him "why are you stabbing your friend in the back?" He was what you'd call a "Nice Guy" ©. He needed other guys to help him meet women so he could then bad mouth them, thinking he would look good by comparison.
REPLIES:
Allen MacCannell
You and I agree the Nice Guy © was worse than the Bad Boy judging from your separate comment below. The book I just wrote above said he needed to stop purloining other mens' girlfriends and meet some women on his own, preferably someone who didn't just go to bed with a bad guy yesterday. I don't think I went more into generalizing than necessary. By the way, how does one bold words like that? That's cool.
Mac Williams
I watch this film while I was in an alcohol addiction treatment program. The Good Guy is not bad, but not great. Seemed to make an attempt at a nice romantic drama, but doesn't quite go all the way. It starts of very slow and for the first half an hour it feels like it isn't going anywhere. But hey, I didn't have anywhere to go either while I was "drying out!" After the first 30 minutes things start to get a bit more entertaining. This is an light weight romance with a few funny bits thrown in which will keep you giggling. Although the plot itself is rather predictable I must say that as the movie unfolds you will be shown something quite different from your initial expectations. This would have been a better film if there were a little bit more character development. Jump ahead a few years. I obviuosly got out of rehab, but wasn't part of that 10% who found success. It wasn't until I fouond LifeBac, a website that offers a modern approach to treating excessive drinking that I really succeeded in modifying my behavoir. The treatment that they are proposing combines medication (baclofen) to remove cravings and along with other "tools" to break the habit loop. I feel great with a life free of cravings, but with the benefits of being able to drink at low-risk levels. I just might watch the Good Guy again.After all I really like Alexis Bledel as an actress, and Scott Porter and Bryan Greenberg were excellent as well. On the other hand I might have a different opinion the second time around.
ilmasyood @Allen MacCannell
I'm not sure if this could apply to every single guy, there is a nice guy act and someone who's genuinely nice. In this movie, even when this nice guy finds out that the boyfriend was kissing another girl in broad daylight, when asked not to tell the girlfriend he doesn't as much as he wanted to be with her he didn't ruin her relationship.
But that is the thing that people have argued about for years, morals, whether or not to tell a person of a cheating partner.
Just because you perceived your friend as a nice guy, doesn't mean that he is nice.
What about the bad boys who get off on making attached women cheat with them?
ilmasyood @Fabian Salini
Haha exactly, his girlfriend was cheating on him while he was on duty, he gave her what she craved and she loved it. Allen thinks the guy was pretending to be a good guy, but his gf knew he was a bad boy and she liked it.
Richard Thayer
Allen MacCannell It seems like you have unresolved anger issues yourself. You seem to be basing your views off one situation with a bad friend. There's nothing wrong with a shy guy getting his friends to help him meet girls; it's called being a wingman. A good guy doesn't necessarily need to be good at approaching women, because if he's really a good guy it shouldn't be a skill he needs to use frequently. What matters is whether or not he can sustain their interest on his own after being introduced. The "good guy" in the movie didn't do anything morally wrong. He met and fell in love with his boss's girlfriend by happenstance, but nothing indicated that he was actively trying to break them apart or that he was purposely using other guys to meet girls. Rather the opposite, his friends were pushing him to meet a woman when it seemed that he wasn't particularly interested in a relationship at the moment. It's not his fault that his boss's girlfriend developed an interest in him, if anything he made repeated attempts to turn her interest away. But the boss turned out to be a douche, so he won by default in the end. As for whether "sisterhoods" of girls team up against a bad boy, then afterwards turn to the shy nice guy that has been in their peripheral, I've seen that happen way too often in real life for your statement about it being a "Hollywood gimmick" to be accurate.
Richard Thayer
It's not uncommon or unrealistic situation. A guy meets a girl who is already in a relationship by the chance of having the same friends/class/workplace. They discover they have similar interests and become friends. Eventually if things don't work out for the original couple, the natural thing the girl does next is turn to the guy who she has developed a connection with in the meantime. So long as no cheating is involved and the guy wasn't actively trying to break them up or hitting on her, there's nothing wrong with it. If the first relationship didn't work out, then it's probably because the girl wasn't happy in it anyway.
You make it sound like the most important thing a guy has to know is how to approach a woman, but the truth is that the majority of guys don't go out actively trying to find and hit on girls, and those that do are usually looking for one night stands. Most relationships happen because two people met each other by chance (whether it be through work, class, a mutual friend, etc.), and gradually develop interest in each other as they get to know each other over a period of time, until one of them asks the other out. I know of very few long term relationships that started with a guy approaching a random stranger and asking her out on the spot.