The Good Guy

To whom does that title refer? Is it our nominal hero, Tommy (Porter), first seen ringing his girlfriend’s doorbell in the rain, only to learn that—gasp!—she’s got another guy upstairs? Or is it his awkward coworker Daniel (Greenberg), an army vet who’s trying to reacclimate to society, apparently several years of assertiveness training removed from a happy life?

The Good Guy at first appears to be a celebration of dick-swinging on Wall Street, an environment in which success with sales is apparently directly proportional to the number of women one seduces. Tommy convinces his boss that he can train Daniel to be a top dog. This proves to be more difficult than expected, as Daniel’s jokes are terrible and his skills with women make Steve Carell’s 40-year-old virgin seem like James Bond. Rather than give him a makeover, the movie does not so much solve this unlikely problem—Greenberg looks like a budget replacement for Eric Bana—as discard it.

Daniel begins to fall for Tommy’s girlfriend (Bledel), portending disaster. This development naturally divides the viewer’s sympathies, but writer-director DePietro knows that when you’ve painted yourself into a corner, you should simply introduce a book club and get its members yapping about the concept of an unreliable narrator. The last reel of The Good Guy is glibly insane, although that is, at least, preferable to vapid.

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