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Aaron Eckhart, Amy Brenneman, Ben Stiller

Neil LaBute directs an all-star cast in this dark comedy of tangled romance. Six beautiful, idiosyncratic individuals try their best to succeed in love, but succeed only in creating an intricate web o...( read more  read more... )f infidelity, sexual frustration, and self-hatred.

Flixster Users

63% liked it

810 ratings

Critics

76% liked it

55 critics

R, 110 min.

Directed by: Aaron Eckhart, Amy Brenneman, Ben Stiller, Catherine Keener, Jason Patric, Nastassia Kinski, Nastassja Kinski, Neil LaBute

Release Date: August 19, 1998

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DVD Release Date: May 1, 2001

Stats: 170 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (170)

  • bradwest
    December 31, 2008
    bradwest
    This is one of those movies that shows the power of dialogue and language in everyone's life. Labute illustrates the violence that words can create upon someone's soul. No one is left unscathed, either the attacker or the victim. Very impressive feat to pull off as the film doesn...( read more)'t end up feeling like a recorded play.
  • StaisilD
    September 19, 2008
    StaisilD
    LaBute paints a picture of personal selfishness and unsettling personallites in this film. He really gives you the impression you are spying on these peoples lives and it's as interesting as it is unsettling. The main characters in this play are the married couple Mary and Barry,...( read more) and their old friends Terri and Jerry who are living together. The names might sound a little silly, but in actual fact their names are never mentioned anywhere in the entire film anyway. You only see them in the credits, so it doesn't really matter. Mary is played by Amy Brenneman and her husband Barry is played by Aaron Eckhart. These two have settled into their lives, physically settled in fact. He's gained weight, wears whatever she says to wear, and they almost certainly drive a mini-van, though you never see them do so. They have basically no remaining sex life whatsoever, and he can pretty much only get satisfaction via masturbation, failing to rise to any other occasion. She is needy beyond belief and living in a 60-cycle hum sort of rut. Their friends Jerry, played by Ben Stiller and Terri, played by Catherine Keener, are one of those couples that you can't imagine ever got together. He's a professor who teaches acting, loves Shakespeare, and can't stop analyzing their relationship in great detail. She's pretty much an ice queen who can't stand his talking, in bed most of all. They are coming apart at the seams, and their sex life is completely on the blink as well, consisting mostly of grudge sex. During a visit after a yearlong break, Jerry and Terri come over for dinner. As they are getting ready to leave, Jerry comes on to Mary, telling her that he has thought about her continuously for the last year and that he wants to see her. After a little resistance, Mary allows that she has thought about him as well and they arrange to meet. This meeting begins the spiraling crash of all of the relationships involved, with much loathsome and pathetic events along the way. Another player in the game is Cary, played by Jason Patric. Cary obviously has some sort of double reverse Oedipus Complex. He is extremely vindictive towards woman, a reptilian sort of predator who, in his own mind at least, is protecting manhood against the slings and arrows of female treachery. He is an old friend of Jerry and Barry's, and his character is one of the most interesting of all. He is cold and calculating to a fault. He does things like practice his sexual patter, record it, then review it later to figure out how to make it more effective. In a strange way though, he is like an animal or reptile, in that emotion doesn't enter into the equation. He kills only for food so to speak.

    Barry: "I just think for right now, we need to treat each other like... meat. Right? Didn't we read that? You need to see me as a - a big - a penis. And you need to be just this huge vagina... to me."

    It is provocative, contraversal, demanding, and even a little bit of guilty fun, it develops each cahracter to it's fullest extent. All the characters are sick demented freaks, but they think they are good people. While flawed, the female characters in this film are far stronger and more humane than their male counterparts. Except for its misfired ending, Your Friends and Neighbors is a compelling piece of work from an expert provocateur.
  • crackingdanio
    May 15, 2008
    crackingdanio
    Whats so scary about this film is, is how horrifibly truthful and honest about relationships it is. Magnificent cast the standout being keener but kudos to stiller too, its refreshing seeing him in a non-slapstick film. It's a film for everyone who's ever cheated, been cheated on...( read more), dumped, married or ever been in a relationshio. If you're looking for that one great film about normal people then YFAN is for you, and hey its funny too because its true
  • rubystevens
    January 4, 2008
    rubystevens
    a brutal black comedy about sex and relationships. nearly as painful as todd solondz' happiness and almost as harsh as labute's wicked first feature, in the company of men. there's not a really likeable character in this film. you've been warned
  • puffchunk
    November 30, 2007
    puffchunk
    I bought this VHS at random in a dollar bin. It made me want to take a shower for eternity.
  • magnolia12883
    October 20, 2009
    magnolia12883
    Neil LaBute's wickedly funny, deeply twisted, woundingly honest (would-be) romantic comedy is about two monstrously selfish "couples," their deeply troubled relationships, a number of attempts at affairs, and two single characters who are no better. We are first introduced to "Ca...( read more)ry" (Jason Patric), a doctor, one of the singles who is a misanthropic chauvinist womanizer, a terminal bachelor who delights in "wining and dining" women into his bed only to turn the tables and emotionally obliterate them; he even practices his "routine" alone in bed and while exercising, employing a tape recorder to playback and "rehearse." He is "best friends" (a relative term, since none of these characters seems to know how to treat people) with "Jerry" (Ben Stiller), a geeky actor/college theater instructor who early in the film, upon asking his class what a "provocative little scene" is all about. in lieu of an answer confesses: "What do these characters all have in common? They all want to... f---! It's always about f---ing." He is living with "Terri" (Catherine Keener), a would-be writer whose work would only be familiar to you if you "read the sides of your Tampon box." They are friends with "Barry" (Aaron Eckhart), a sweet, big dumb business-type with ginger-colored hair and a 70s-porn star mustache, and his wife "Mary" (Amy Brenneman), a sweet, prudish young writer of relationship articles. The two couples have a host of sexual and relationship issues: "Jerry" is a major "talker" in bed, much to "Terri"'s chagrin; "Barry" tries desperately to do everything to cause a spark with his wife "Mary" but is often rebuffed, which leads to compulsive masturbation, causing him to muse to a co-worker: "Nobody makes me cum the way I do." Into these people's matrix, via a recurring motif, is "Cheri" (Nastassja Kinski), a sexy young "artist's assistant" at a trendy local gallery whose interactions with most of the characters seem to consist largely of answering the same dumb questions and variations on her and their reactions. The one character she comes to know is "Terri," who begins an untoward sexual affair with her. The sapphic relationship between these two is juxtaposed with "Jerry"'s own deception: he begins an affair with "Mary," his "best friend's wife," inspired by an earlier get-together where he first noticed an attraction to her, but that goes nowhere in a fast direction. The film is the sophomore writing-directing effort from playwrite-turned-filmmaker Neil LaBute, who made his debut with the equally callous and savage "In the Company of Men" (1997). That one starred Eckhart as a deeply twisted businessman who enlists a colleague (Matt Malloy) in a cruel and vicious prank - competing for the affections of a deaf new co-worker (Stacy Edwards). Is LaBute a misogynist, a misanthrope, or simply a chronicler of the socially maladjusted? As "Terri" says at one point: "Love is a disease." In LaBute's world, it certainly is; except the characters aren't so much infected as infecting. Fittingly, the tagline for this is "a modern immorality tale." The mood is set early on by the pastel-colored paper-thin animations which populate the credits, set to Metallica's "Enter the Sandman" as performed in a lyric-less harsh-string version by Apocalyptica; this isn't bittersweet, it's just plain bitter. There are no exteriors, only interiors, so this could be any big city: New York, LA, Chicago, elsewhere. The characters are never referred to by name until the end credits because it doesn't matter what their names are; they are archetypes who relate to each other knowingly, and they wouldn't refer to each other by name anyway. Each character has their own traits, but few virtues. "Jerry" is the typical would-be intellectual theater geek who hits not so subtly on his students; his relationship with "Mary" fails quickly and silently because he is over-analytical and so excited to finally be with her, he seems to ignore her discomforture over the whole cheating with the husband's best friend thing. "Terri" is not the repressed wannabe lesbian in a bad heterosexual relationship, but rather seemingly wants simply to have silence during sex. "Barry" is frustrated in his marriage because he can't make his wife happy with him, so he focuses on making himself happy; "Mary" is not happy at all, with anyone, least of all in her own skin. The two non-attached characters have issues as well: "Cary" is brutally honest to the point of being a sociopath; a scene in a bookstore where he runs into "Terri" is particularly telling - he starts out sort of friendly but a bit intense and ends it with her verbally eviscerated. "Cheri," her would-be paramour, doesn't talk during sex like her predecessor, but does ask too many questions and puts her new lover off a bit by doing so. These characters are all venomous snakes with absolutely no semblence of an understanding of what it means to be in a relationship - they want what they want, and can't understand why their partners won't compromise; if they can't make their partners happy, they wonder self-absorbedly if it's them. "Cary" is the unique exception to the rule because when somebody falls into his web, it is as exactly as brief and under the exact terms he dictates, and he doesn't let himself get emotionally attached. Others are more fragile than they appear: When "Terri" finds out about "Jerry"'s affair, she seems very upset, but appears to have forgotten her own deception, as if it's okay for her to cheat but not for her boyfriend. When she confronts him later, she points out: "At least I went outside our calling circle." The dialogue slices with horrific candor; notice particularly a scene in a men's sauna that begins innocently enough with the question: "Who was your best lay?" and ends with "Cary" taking the ball and totally running it off the field. Notice how LaBute frames this scene - slightly off-center from "Cary" and a painfully slow zoom into a close-up on his face as he relays a show-stopping, stunning monologue. Then notice the reaction shots. The payoff is one of keen darkly comic timing and it's pitch-perfect. If the film ends with some combinations of characters we can anticipate, the final shot is one that will totally catch you off guard; LaBute himself admits there is no inkling that it could be coming, though with a cast of six, it's almost inevitable. It's not cheating so much as a frightening portent of the potential things to come. This is, indeed, the sort of date movie that makes you wanna go home alone. One of the year's best films!

    NOTE: The flywheels at the MPAA originally "slapped" this with an NC-17 before reducing it to an R upon reflection. There is sexual content, but it isn't graphic, there's no nudity, and saucy and graphic language does not an "adult movie" make.
  • closedmouth
    August 21, 2009
    closedmouth
    Fascinating and satisfyingly complex character piece. Very harsh and very cynical and almost refreshinging in that sense.
  • SaxophoneScone
    April 30, 2009
    SaxophoneScone
    seriously bizarre. neil Labute is a cool director. he makes strange dark films with real themes.
  • FiLmCrAzY
    April 29, 2009
    FiLmCrAzY
    its an ok movie a bit weird and some of the time im not to shore as to what is actually going on really but i guess watchable but isnt that interesting to be honest with not much of a storyline
  • graelon
    January 12, 2009
    graelon
    Not exactly outstanding, I'm just partial to these kind of movies. It was decent.

View All Your Friends & Neighbors Reviews

Critic Reviews

May 11, 2001
Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

With LaBute, you get a filmmaker who cuts to the timeless heart of sexual warfare. full review

January 1, 2000
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

LaBute's Your Friends and Neighbors is to In the Company of Men as Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction was to Reservoir Dogs. full review

January 1, 2000
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

Full of empty provocation! full review

View more Your Friends & Neighbors reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

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