"The Good Guy" is a relationship drama. You would be forgiven if you assumed it was yet another twenty-something girl trying to sort out her love life and career in a romantic comedy. You would be forgiven for thinking that, but you would also be wrong. It's actually better than that.
The film is driven by three characters, all of them completely fleshed-out and three-dimensional. Not one of them is central, but all of them individually and triangularly. The film continuously surprises in very subtle ways. The characters are better written than first appears, and even when the film tells you the characters will surprise you, it still comes as a surprise.
I was expecting a film about Beth - a very standard, trying to find herself story. What makes it better than that is the fact that it's a drama - I am hard-pressed to name a similar film without comedy undertones or overtones. This is a drama - dark and sombre.
"The Good Guy" may not be for everybody but it is a good twenty-somethings relationship story told through drama instead of comedy. In the film, Beth complains about a novel that she read where half-way through the narrator turns out to be unreliable. "What's the point of that?" she asks. Daniel responds "Well isn't that life? It surprises you." Indeed it does. "The Good Guy" may be just like life, dramatic, and it surprises you.
