Robert Downey Jr. just saved my life. No, he didn't find me lying unconscious on the street and give me CPR. No, he didn't inspire me to get off drugs. And he didn't swoop down in a suit of high tech armor and rescue me from The Unicorn. I did just watch Two Girls and a Guy and his performance is the only thing that kept this movie from being slit-my-wrists unwatchable. This is the sort of film that makes otherwise normal people hate independent cinema. It is dull and pretentious and phony and is the sort of New York City storytelling that even Woody Allen finds a little too self involved. Imagine Kevin Smith without a sense of humor, Quentin Tarantino without a sense of irony and Michael Bay without a drop of adrenaline. That's writer/director James Toback in all his ignominy here.Here's the whole deal. Carla (Heather Graham) and Lou (Natasha Gregson Wagner) find out they've been dating the same guy for the last 10 months. When Blake (Robert Downey Jr.) returns to his insanely huge loft, they confront him and blather commences. They talk about hurt feelings. They talk about relationships. They talk about acting. They talk about Blake's mom. Carla and Lou talk. Carla and Blake talk. Carla, Blake and Lou talk. Blake and Carla have sex. Then they talk and talk and talk some more. But for all that chatter, the best scenes in the whole production are when Blake is talking on the phone to someone the audience can't hear. That's because only the awesome power of RDJ's talent is able to take this fake, unrealistic dialog and make it sound like something a human being would say.It's not that Heather Graham and Natasha Gregson Wagner are without talent. It's just that you don't need talent for this material. You need (trumpets blare)…TALENT!!!!!! Whenever Graham and Wagner open their mouths, they can't do anything but recite this crap. It doesn't sound like anything people would say. It's not structured like anything people would say. The motivations and behavior assigned to Carla and Lou by this script are as realistic and believable as the special effects in Plan 9 From Outer Space.Let me give you one example of what I mean and I'll only give you one for fear that remembering more of Two Girls and a Guy would send me into a self-induced coma of disgust and ennui. When Blake returns home, Lou and Carla initially hide. Then Carla emerges and slowly works up to an argument with Blake where she gets him to profess his unshakable fidelity to her. That's when Lou emerges from the closet to expose his romantic perfidy. But what woman is going to sit in the closet for the better part of 10 minutes while her boyfriend's other girlfriend talks to him? It's not Carla and Lou planned to trap Blake somehow. Lou just sat in the darkness for no reason until the Almighty Plot Hammer knocked her into the light. What kind of person could both control her own emotions and trust a near total stranger enough to let the situation unfold like that? And that scene is not the most contrived one in the script.Somehow, RDJ is able to take this dialog that even George Lucas would choke on and make it not only fun to listen to but sound like something which could come out of the mouth of a living homo sapien. How does he do it? I don't know. That's what makes him so great and should make all of us so thankful he didn't wind up dead in some alley from a drug overdose. But even RDJ can't salvage things when he has to interact with his less gifted castmates and their vain attempts to do something with this garbage writing.Do you want to know how bad Two Girls and a Guy really is? If, at some point in this movie, Graham and Wagner had gotten buck naked and engaged in a 5 minute long lesbian sex scene, I still wouldn't recommend watching it. Not even to fast forward to that scene. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Two Guys and a Girl is a stage play put on film, but what sets it apart are what make any play interesting: some staggering scenes of drama and conflict (or even humor) and the performances. The film is ostensibly about two girls (Wagner and Graham), both dating the duplicitous actor Blake (Downey Jr) and how by chance they see each other on the steps of his building waiting for him, figure out who the other is to him, and then ambush him with the big question: Why the lies? This becomes the main crux of what Toback is after, which is an investigation of lies in an actor and the sexual truths in a man who seems to be obsessed with his (supposedly) sick mother, and even reverts into performing Hamlet, oddly enough, rather than face up to the big questions at hand.Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage deep? Not entirely, and as a director of actors with such a low-budget AND ambition he takes a few minutes getting things feeling right (maybe this is due in some small part to Wagner not being the strongest actor, at least compared to the other two around her - or maybe just the one really) with the weirdly fast dialog. But when Downey steps into the room the film takes on a whole other air. There's complaints to be had about the film, such as a script that only usually, not always, takes very seriously what a confrontation-mega-argument like this would really turn into (albeit, and I must say it, the ill-rated NC-17 sex scene is about as hot as anything in late 90s cinema). And a couple of scenes contain, again, some clunky dialog that maybe needed a polish over - keep in mind this is a script Toback wrote in a little over a week, and maybe didn't know at first if it would be film or theater bound.And yet, with the complaints to be had, there's Robert Downey Jr. Toback wrote the film for him and it's hard not to see him fulfill the character every single moment on screen. Maybe it's a little easy to see an actor like Downey playing a full-of-himself actor/whatever who dances around relationships with women and commitment since Blake is a character who can't even trust himself let alone others. You don't want to take your eyes off this guy for a second, and that's the genius of Downey Jr whenever he's in material that calls his attention. If nothing else, Two Girls and a Guy becomes an actor-movie must-see for the scene right after he's "punked" his girlfriends by pretending suicide, face half blood splattered, and has a "talk" at himself in the mirror. It's a moment of madness that could give Travis Bickle an eyebrow raise.And that ending - one of those rare twists that somehow makes the rest of the film look in a different light. It also provides one more scene of amazing acting from one of America's best.

This movie is about pathetic, spoiled, ego-driven winers who think they have something interesting to say, performed by pathetic, spoiled, ego-driven winers who think they are interesting. Straight from the coke-filled gutters of New York's arty farty incestuous drama scene.How so many viewers get tricked into making them think this carries any substance remains a mystery to me. Maybe they secretly long to belong too to this overpaid and overestimated 'actor guild' or maybe they have never seen a decent movie?Get out, put your hands in the dirty earth and get a real job. Otherwise, kill your self with a real gun.

I liked this movie because of the fact that the whole thing takes place in one setting. Almost like a theater production. Great acting too. The weakest link would have to be the dialog. A bit corny at times and a bit slow in a few scenes as well. I really like the film though and purchased it. Robert Downey Jr. is one of the great actors of our generation.Most 20-30 somethings can relate to the storyline. Or maybe it was just me relating to his character and his emotional immaturity.I highly recommend at least renting this film. Of course, there aren't too many Robert Downey films I wouldn't recommend.