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The Good Guy - Who is he??

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FYI: This blog contains spoilers. You have been warned.

The Good Guy. That phrase has been around for quite some time and when one hears it, they might think of the perfect boy next store – cute, well dressed, well spoken and doesn’t get into a lot of bad situations. So with this movie starring Alexis Bledel and Bryan Greenberg, the question becomes who is the good guy: Tommy or Daniel?

The way this movie started was interesting. It started with a scene in the present, Tommy going up to his ex-girlfriend Beth’s apartment asking for help and we feel bad for Tommy and make Beth out to be the bad person in this movie. Then, the movie does a flashback 3 months to when the real story begins: Daniel comes into play at Tommy’s work as a wannabe stockbroker and they form a friendship. And the movie goes back and forth between the good guy being Tommy or Daniel. You don’t know until the end.

Alexis Bledel plays this role all the time (example Gilmore Girls) so she wasn’t anything special in this movie. Don’t get me wrong, she was probably the perfect actress for this movie: soft-spoken, shy, and she looks like the girl next door. Her story and her emotion were great. But the real story is between Daniel and Tommy. Some may say this movie is predictable but after 15 years of watching romantic dramas and comedies, all of them have become predictable.  What this movie brings (along with other movies of its kind) is a sense of compassion and feel-goodness (not sure that is a word but I’m making it one for this blog) for the main characters. The movie makes you feel for Tommy and Beth as a great couple, and you start to believe, just as Beth does, that he is different than the other stockbrokers. When Daniel comes in, the audience is asked to feel sorry for him as well and at the same time choose between whether or not to like him. Is he a good guy, just trying to make it in New York City or is he a bad guy, taking advantage of his new friendship with Tommy and stealing his girlfriend? The movie points you in that direction so that you won’t notice what’s really happening: Tommy is not the good guy.

In one moment, everything you thought was right was dead wrong. He becomes the womanizer; he becomes the bad guy and Daniel was always the good guy. At the beginning, I will admit I thought Daniel was the bad guy, stealing the girlfriend of his work friend who was only trying to help him succeed. I was glad I was wrong because I like the characters Greenberg plays – sweet, innocent, always wants to do right.

The movie gets 3.5/5 stars. The main reason for so low is because the storyline is the same as most mother movies like it so it isn’t going to stick in my mind for very long. A movie that will stay with me and keep me thinking long after the credits roll is a good movie in my mind. The same goes for TV shows and books I read. You will see in my next blog!

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