CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · Arts & Letters

I Love You, Man

2009 American film by John Hamburg

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ958257 ↗
Source-derived summary

I Love You, Man is a 2009 American bromantic comedy film written and directed by John Hamburg, based on a script by Larry Levin. The film stars Paul Rudd as a friendless man struggling to find a best man for his upcoming wedding, and the new best friend (Jason Segel) he finds strains his relationship with his fiancée (Rashida Jones).

The film was produced by DreamWorks Pictures, De Line Pictures, Bernard Gayle Productions and The Montecito Picture Company and released theatrically in the United States by Paramount Pictures on March 20, 2009, to mostly positive reviews. The film grossed $92 million on a $40 million budget. It marked the third collaboration between Segel and Rudd, after Knocked Up (2007) and Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008).

Plot

Peter Klaven, a Los Angeles real estate agent, proposes to his girlfriend Zooey Rice, and she accepts. He does not have any close male friends to share the news with, only family and female acquaintances. After overhearing her friends' concern over his lack of guy friends, Peter decides he needs to find some to have a best man for the wedding.

Peter turns to his gay younger brother, Robbie, for advice on meeting men. He makes a series of overtures toward various men, including Barry, the persistently hot-headed husband of Zooey's friend Denise.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “I Love You, Man” is 2009 American film by John Hamburg. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Love, American and film, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2009, 2007, 2008—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—2009-04-23, 2009-01-01—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. For this dossier, Love, American and film is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “2009 American film by John Hamburg” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q958257. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2009, 2007 and 2008.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “I Love You, Man”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow I Love You, Man primary sources, I Love You, Man archive and Love research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “I Love You, Man”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “I Love You, Man” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.