The sitcom blight continues with the gag-infested I Love You,Man. Instead of credibly accounting for the insecurity and social maladjustment of go-it-alone, friendless men, writer-director John Hamburg contrives a situation where California real estate agent Peter Klaven (Paul Rudd) needs to find a best man for his upcoming marriage to Zooey (Rashida Jones). After a series of “man-dates,” mild-mannered Peter meets gross, boisterous Sydney Fife (Jason Segel), an investor who shows Peter the joys of masculine camaraderie.

If those TV-cute character names don’t turn your stomach, the simplification of genuine emotion will. Hamburg has that Judd Apatow knack of reducing life possibilities to comic shtick. Is it possible that seven decades after radio’s “Fibber McGee and Molly,” and just 10 years after TV’s Friends, filmmakers and audiences have come to expect manipulative jokes as a summary of human experience? From its snarky title on down, everything about I Love You, Man—Peter’s preference for female friends, taunting from his father, competition with a male co-worker—ignores the complexities of male identity.The bigger issue of friendship—which was the real subject of Fanboys and Adam Sandler’s underrated I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry—is completely misunderstood.

Through sitcom phoniness, Hamburg teases the culture’s unease with homosexuality. An Out magazine puff-piece on the film mentions, “the source of the humor…isn’t in homosexuality itself but in the fraught relationship straight men have with it.”Then why does Hamburg trivialize Peter and Sydney’s attempts at intimacy through love of the rock band Rush? Hamburg’s formulaic humor is a symptom of how our culture denies intimacy.

Laughing at these infantile jokes (Sydney’s bachelor-frankness about masturbation and oral sex) builds resistance to emotional maturity. And for what? To further accustom us to the coarsening of TV-style humor.

Paul Rudd should know better. Rudd’s films with his buddies from The State (Diggers,The Ten, Role Models) explored male identity with daring, recognizable honesty and wit. His Apatow films are like his Neil LaBute work: gross falsification. It’s ironic that Rudd’s sensitive-doofus specialty— which has always leaned toward superb gay delicacy—should be exploited by Hamburg’s crudeness. No actor acts gay better than Paul Rudd, whether imitating Tom Ford’s gay lecher chic for a Vanity Fair cover parody or Peter’s blushing reaction to his own macho outburst. But the scenes contrasting meek Peter with his cockhound gay brother (played by Andy Samberg) are merely a PC suck-up.

Samberg’s role allows Hamburg and Rudd to avoid the gay-identity risk that Adam Sandler braved in Chuck and Larry.The boymisses-boy detour from Hamburg’s countdown-to-wedding-day plot distracts us from Peter Klaven’s inability to forge emotional honesty with anyone. It’s an accidental metaphor for Hollywood’s sit-com dishonesty.