In the sub- genre of sophomoric but wise, potty-mouthed but smart, comedies that comprise the Judd Apatow oeuvre, “I Love You, Man” ranks near the bottom. This is partly because Apatow had nothing to do with the film, though his man paws are everywhere. Compared to the tightly edited, perfectly acted, and surprisingly profound “40 Year Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up” (both of which Apatow directed), this film feels long, tired, and shallow.

But, like all films in the billion-dollar Apatow genre, “I Love You, Man” asks a vital question: in the post-Friedan, gay marriage era, what is the nature of straight male friendship?

Though “I Love You, Man”’s answer is predictably trite (boys and the babe achieve rapprochement) stereotypical (straight buddies do bong hits and play Rush in “the man cave”), and broad (if, at times, laugh-out-loud funny), the question is too important to drop because of one half-baked attempt to answer it.

In eras past, the nature of male friendship was “straightforward." Most men of a certain economic bracket, regardless of orientation, engaged in the same rituals: golf, boozing, and boozy road trips to go golfing. My oldest brother’s version of male friendship is still based around this concept.

This traditional American notion of male bonding existed before Robert Bly got straight men drumming, primal scream got straight men, well, screaming, the Food Network got straight men fussing over fennel, AA got them emoting about their inner child, and career-driven wives started needing more from their spouses than a paycheck and a morning quickie. In addition to being relatively well-mannered breadwinners, dudes now had to be super caring and compassionate, extra sensitive to the subtle nuances of her ever-changing and delicate moods, and occasionally make dinner and change diapers too. And on cue.

Enter the Sensitive New Age Guy. What my buddy Don Francis calls the S.N.A.G. Don and I know the type, since, as late boomers raised in the era of Ms. Magazine, we have, like every male member of our generation (no matter how superficially macho) a bit of S.N.A.G. in our DNA. It is one reason Don and I called our makeshift band the SNAGS. Except only Don had musical ability. The best I could muster was some anarchic body maneuvers, ala the wild hippie dance moves of Hazel’s Fred Nemo.

In “I Love You, Man” self-effacing realtor Peter Klaven (the always enjoyable Paul Rudd) is your classic S.N.A.G. He’s so feminized, so docile, so perfectly trained to be a good little doggie, he only has female friends. Only one problem: he needs a best man for his upcoming wedding.

And therein lies the plot contrivance. Klaven goes on a series of mildly funny “man-dates” in search of his best man. This engenders the equally obvious plot question: will the chosen best man -- the tall, erudite, if deliberately uncouth houndog Sydney Fife (Jason Segel) -- and the smokin' hot fiancé (Rashida Jones) get along?

It all moves along easily, with plenty of dog poop scenes and Lou Ferrigno (“Incredible Hulk”) jokes along the way, but, in my mind, all the formulaic plot stuff is secondary to the far more interesting question the film barely touches: what does it mean to be a straight guy in America circa 2009?

As the film’s designated S.N.A.G, the normally snide and snarky Rudd has been carefully remade into a relatively earnest mensch for a film audience of twenty-something and thirty-something men with no clue what the hell I am talking about because being a S.N.A.G. is what passes as being a normal guy these days. Witness the overwhelming popularity of the ultimate S.N.A.G., the always appropriate (perhaps the “Special Olympics” line on Leno was an attempt to crack the squeaky clean façade?), always sensitive, perennially non-threatening Barack Obama.

Iran? Obama reaches out, the mullahs bash back. China? Obama curbs the human rights rap, China clamps down on the Tibetans, calls for a new world currency, and attacks a U.S. Navy vessel. Russia? Obama hits “the reset button,” Russia gets Kyrgystan to deny us the Manas airbase, critical to Bam’s Afghan strat. Yes, our POTUS plays basketball, but watch how he plays. He’s nice. He distributes. He’s got a soft touch. TOTAL S.N.A.G.

The president’s brother-in-law, Craig Robinson, coach of the Oregon State Beavers, is correct: you learn a lot about a man by watching him play ball. Come and watch Crotty play sometime. I do not feel satisfied until I’ve used the f-word in fifteen different ways. And that’s based on missing one three-pointer. I will claw, press, scramble, push, and intimidate until I get my way on the court. And do NOT get into an argument with me. I will go psychotic on you. And I will not stop until I have completely called you on all your personal junk. Just saying that last sentence makes me feel good.

The ultimate passel of S.N.A.G. ballers was found at the late great Ida B. Wells game in San Francisco’s Lower Haight. My fellow b-ball buddy, Dakkan Abbe, can attest to the ferocious Crotty tongue, which was shocking to the gentle, consensus-building posse of Bay Area writers, teachers, and eco-entrepreneurs who played every Saturday. They were Obama-nauts in training, one and all.

In “I Love You, Man” the fill-in for basketball is fencing. This is where I relate to the lead character. Klaven does not hang out with his fencing partners after playing. And, with a few exceptions, sure enough, I often didn’t hang out with my basketball buddies after playing basketball. First, because I am an Adult Child of Catholic Alcoholics. I shun alcohol (when I drink I get harassed by 50 Cent wannabes or drunk Japanese nuclear physicists, who want to pin Nagasaki on my “Korean ass”) and pot (you think Bill O’Reilly’s paranoid?), and the stupid throwback rituals (like poker night) that S.N.A.G.s engage in today in a futile attempt to reclaim their Dad’s (or Archie Bunker’s) idea of manhood. Secondly, I am a workaholic. Third, many guys who play pickup basketball (with the exception of the Eco-S.N.A.G. game in Portland, the Ida B. S.N.A.G. game, and assorted S.N.A.G. games in Park Slope and Manhattan) are cultural lowbrows. This idea that you are you going to meet the equivalent of Education Secretary Arne Duncan at a YMCA pickup game is nuts. Most of these guys I wouldn’t introduce to the dude who fumigates my apartment. Finally, and this is key, I get nervous sharing my deepest feelings with so-called “straight guys.”

I suspect this is a quandary shared by other men. And one that “I Love You, Man” does not fully address, but which really is at the heart of the Straight Male Bonding quandary. Because in an era that demands that straight guys behave more like women, the existence of a straight male buddy suddenly, perversely, becomes a weird threat. Like, hey, if I open up with my straight male friend, as I have been conditioned to do by the mores of this highly sensitized era, then I am, strangely, emotionally, cheating on my girlfriend or spouse. What’s more, if this straight dude becomes my confidante, I no longer have a safe refuge to be a total dickhead. And, frankly, I need, on occasion, to be a total dickhead.

Enter The Gay Male Friend (CMF). For guys like me, who fear they will become feminized castrated mush buckets, the GMF offers the safest of all refuges: a caring listener without enmeshment. With your GMF, a straight dude, a mostly straight dude, or a metrosexual dude can feel totally at ease confiding their deepest, darkest secrets. Your GMF will listen and genuinely care. He loves it when you open your heart, share your feelings, and admit your confusion and despair. And, guess what, he won’t call you “gay” when you let out that vulnerable side, or admit to a secret interest in astrology, or, as comes up in “I Love You, Man,” a taste for the film “Chocolat” (which I hated, though I did enjoy the chick-friendly “Love, Actually”) because –- guess what? -- he’s GAY. What’s more, he’s also drawn to the Neanderthal in you because nothing is hotter to most gay men than a straight one. It’s sheer stupidity on the part of straight guys to not avail themselves of the beautiful evolutionary quirk of homosexuality.

The standard male psyche is wired this way: when I finally, after great prodding, open up and share my feelings, I feel so much adrenaline I want to share the love with everyone. So overwhelmed do we become in these precious moments that we scare ourselves because, “OH GOD!,” we are losing our precious boundaries, and, “OH, NO, NOT THIS!,” wanting to share our love with the other person, even if that other person is, “F**K"!,” a dude.

Alas, when this other person is a straight male, it REALLY scares us. First, “what if I suddenly feel a strange and sudden pull towards this straight guy or express a desire to just hang out for hours, or, Oh No!!, share dinner. Oh shit, that means I must be gay. Not that!!!!” And, what’s more, “What if this straight dude rejects me. What if this straight dude rejects the love, man?” As a result of this fear, our interactions with even our closest straight male friends only have the veneer of vulnerability. Our starving psyche knows we are merely acting out tired old rituals of male bonding without feeding our gaping hunger for meaningful male interaction.

The Gay Male Friend answers this hunger. Because, you see, the Gay Male Friend will never reject the love. No, no. The Gay Male Friend will receive the love. Because the GMF is wired to want US. Which is what part of us desperately needs. We, the Chasers, need occasionally to be Chased. We, the Fathers, need sometimes to be Fathered. We want to be wanted by our brothers, man. We want to be loved, nurtured, and accepted in our craven (er, Klaven), straight, confused, angry, frustrated, emasculated, caveman vulnerability. We want to more than “hug it out,” in Ari Gold vernacular. We want to be “heard,” man.

But here’s the key. Though deep down, when so overwhelmed by these powerful emotions, anything is possible (witness the number of so-called “straight men” who have “gay affairs”), long term we are not wired “that way.” And any straight male who has ever batted for the other side, whether by choice, to make his GMF happy, to piss off his parents, or because he’s passing through a Dennis Rodman phase, knows this in his gut. He also knows that should the time come, and he’s stuck for years in a federal penitentiary, he’s not going to be clueless about what is about to happen to him when he strides into that shower naked and alone and a big beefy dude with an Aryan Nation tattoo on his chest saddles up behind.

So, table this notion of “bro-mance,” which “I Love You, Man” proffers and which definitely has its place. While superficially satisfying, “bro-mance” is ultimately unsatisfying because there is no risk of male-on-male action. You need that risk to fully open up with another man, and, ultimately, to know who you really are.

Warning: your Gale May Friend will generate tremendous homophobic blowback from your jealous g-unit because women, even in the age of female empowerment, still feel that the care and feeding of the male psyche is the sole provenance of women. Sorry sister. No longer true.

Believe me when I say this: the best women will not deny your need for a strong and lasting GMF. These women are big enough and smart enough to dig a dude who is honest and aware of who he is in all his multi-layered, yet lovable, complexity because these dudes not only make for more interesting companions, they are hotter than hell in bed.

And that’s a bit of truth that the writers of “I Love You, Man” are far too scared and far too straight (in the worst sense of the word) to face head on … man.