What Love Is is a 2007 rom-com that touches the whole core of a group of friends. It stars Cuba Gooding Jr., Matthew Lillard, Mars Callahan, and Sean Astin. So, how is this movie that is 17 years old still a top rom-com? Oh boy, strap in, because you’re in for a treat. It’s a 2007 movie, so unless you live under a rock, you should have seen it by now, but here’s a SPOILER ALERT just in case. Are you ready?
It Still Holds To This Day
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The plot of What Love Is is very simple, and the setting is very ordinary. That is why this movie is so damn relatable. Cuba Gooding’s character Tom is going back home to see his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day. He plans to propose to her, but he finds that she moved out except for two suitcases that she couldn’t get into her car.
Most of the movie happens in Tom’s apartment. His friends start arriving and we have the most stereotypical—yet realistic—crew of friends ever. First, you have Sal (Lillard). He arrives as a highly-drunk man, in a suit, who wants to be a gangster and is a textbook womanizer.
Ken, Wayne, and George (Callahan, Daly, and Astin respectively) quickly appear as well. Ken is a married guy who just feels like going out for drinks with his friends, but his marriage has minimized these outings. He loves his wife, though. Wayne is a gay friend, who has to put up with Sal’s homophobic remarks. They’ve all been friends for years, but he gets offended constantly by Sal. As for George, he is just the typical nice guy who doesn’t land many ladies, even though he is totally worthy of dating. Nice guys finish last, am I right?
We all have that friend who’s just a classic f***boy who goes on a rant on how he was the best man possible until he got hurt by a woman. We all have that hopeless romantic friend who wants to live happily ever after but has not much in the way of game to land their princess. Every guy group of friends has that one dude who is just a great man, but somehow love is not on his side, despite plenty of attempts. And not all groups have a guy friend, but we all have that one bro who uses sexual innuendos for everything. These are the friends represented in this movie. And it’s brilliant.
The Ladies
No, I’m not going to denigrate women by saying they are hot and that’s all they do. Actually, they play an incredible part in this movie. Sal, the womanizer that he is, invites a group of girl friends to Tom’s house, though Tom was just dumped. Each woman has her own set of interests, and you quickly see how every man has one girl for himself.
One just wants some action; Sal took her home. One tried to bang Ken, but he stayed loyal to his wife after an internal debate (kudos, my man). One just instantly clicked with Wayne, who is getting married to his boyfriend, so they bonded by talking about their wedding. Last but not least, one was left with George, who was keen on trying to disprove the “11th-man” theory.
Each woman in the film helps bring each of the men’s identities to life. That’s how powerful women are to men. The movie does a wonderful job demonstrating that.
The Monologues Tell You What Love Is
The monologues! See, I am a very—and I mean very—distracted person. My brain goes 100 miles an hour and if something doesn’t grab my attention, I’m easily disinterested. Needless to say, many monologues bore the living hell out of me (looking at you, High School Principal). This movie excels at maintaining the viewer’s attention.
Each of the main characters in What Love Is does their own rants or monologues, trying to describe what love is to them… Or at least what they think. They do this from places of hurt, of love, of deception, or of hopelessness. Of course, all boosted by that liquid gold called alcohol.
You can easily identify what every character is thinking and going through at that exact same moment. It’s just an amazing, funny, and quite realistic experience of how we guys talk when women are not around. And the pop culture references—OH MY GOD! Such brilliant dialogues, man.
A Movie Made For All Tastes
Whether you’re the womanizer, the hopeless romantic, the broken-hearted, or the sick-innuendo-guy, you can relate to this. For guys, it’s like a way to let stuff go without saying it, because a character who’s going through something similar is saying it for us.
For women, it’s a way to understand how men think and operate, how much power they can hold over them, and how any tiny thing they do can send a man through a downward spiral, or uplift him to the highest of highs.
What Love Is is a fun, simple, realistic movie, with great dialogue and great acting all around. If you want to have a nice time, just watch and enjoy. Who knows; it could even spark conversations with your partner or friends.
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