Some actors simply seem best suited to stay in supporting roles. For whatever reasons, they provide their finest work as the buddy or the foil or whatever, and when asked to take the lead, they falter.

I mean, who ever thought that Judge Reinhold would make a great leading man? Talented guy but he had “second banana” written all over him.

The same problem affects Jason Lee. In flicks like Almost Famous and Chasing Amy, he steals more than a few scenes in supporting roles. In 2003’s A Guy Thing, Lee takes the reins, but he does little with them.

Paul, (Lee) faces impending nuptials to Karen (Selma Blair), and he attends the bachelor party his buddy Jim (Shawn Hatosy) throws for him. Paul meets “Tiki Girl Becky” (Julia Stiles) – and wakes up next to her the following morning.

From there, Paul attempts to hide his apparent infidelity from Karen, a problem that intensifies when he discovers Becky’s relationship to his fiancée. In addition, he starts to get to know Becky better, which complicates matters since it seems obvious that the pair connect very well.

Guy offers a meager plot. More like a long episode of Three’s Company than a feature film, Guy delivers an extremely weak story that exists solely as an excuse for lots of wacky gags.

Five years after the success of There’s Something About Mary, we still dealt with its imitators. Guy doesn’t quite embrace the ultra-gross stylings of flicks like Road Trip or Saving Silverman, but it tosses in more than enough genital and excrement gags to please those with an affinity for the genre.

Unfortunately, that ain’t me. These stabs at “humor” fail to provoke a positive response from me.

None of the rest of the film ever ignites either. We find lots of “mistaken impression” bits – ala Three’s Company - but none of these seem amusing.

The various characters come across as bland at best. Because Lee can be so good in supporting roles, it really does disappoint to see him in such a neutered part.

Lee plays it safe as Paul and never makes the role stand out in any way. Blair also comes across as flat and unremarkable. Stiles brings a decent sense of charm to Becky, but she can’t elevate the material on her own.

Little more than a tired exercise in the inevitable, A Guy Thing doesn’t offer a screamingly bad experience. Instead, this becomes one of those movies that plods along and never goes anywhere.

Slow-paced and tedious, it doesn’t do much to stand out, which is why it remains a middle of the road bad movie. Some flicks are remarkably, glaringly, rant-on-a-street-corner terrible, but Thing is just boring and pointless. It fails to inspire the passion to denounce it to a greater degree.

A Guy Thing appears in both an aspect ratio of approximately 1.85:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. This was a problematic transfer.

Sharpness was one of the issues. Most of the movie displayed decent delineation, but the image was never especially concise, and mild softness popped up on more than a few occasions.

Jagged edges and shimmering weren’t an issue, but I noticed some edge haloes, and the print seemed dirtier than expected. Grain was oddly heavy, and I quite a few marks and specks.

Colors tended to be mediocre. The hues were never ugly, but they seemed somewhat muddy and lacked much pop.

Black levels appeared acceptably dense and tight, but shadow detail offered another weakness. Low-light sequences were somewhat murky and thick on occasion. The result was watchable enough for a “C-“ but that was it.

The DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack of A Guy Thing suffered from no overt flaws, but it displayed a distinct lack of ambition. The mix remained oriented toward the front the vast majority of the time. In that domain, good musical delineation appeared, and the soundfield showed pretty nice movement and activity when appropriate.

The rears mostly contributed general ambience. A little split-surround material cropped up, but the back speakers generally stuck with light reinforcement of the forward channels.

Audio quality appeared positive overall. Speech sounded a little stiff at times, but dialogue mostly came across as fairly natural and distinct. I noticed no concerns with intelligibility or edginess.

Music demonstrated nice dynamics and sounded consistently bright and vivid. Effects played a limited role in the production, but they worked well also. They were clean and accurate as a whole.

Bass response popped up most favorably in regard to the music, and low-end seemed tight and warm in general. The audio for A Guy Thing dropped to a “B-“ just because it displayed such a bland soundfield, but the mix seemed fine for this sort of movie.

How did this 2024 Blu-ray compare to the 2011 BD version? Audio and picture appeared to be virtually identical, so if any differences manifested, I didn’t discern them.

Whereas the 2011 Blu-ray came with a pretty good collection of extras, the 2024 reissue drops all of them.

A Guy Thing offers nothing more than another crude Farrelly brothers wannabe. We find little humor or spark on display. The Blu-ray presents flawed picture, decent sound and no supplements. I can’t recommend either the movie or the Blu-ray, especially since the 2011 BD offered identical visual/audio quality and added bonus features.

To rate this film, visit the DVD review of A GUY THING