South By Southwest has become a prime spot for raucous R-rated comedies to premiere. Knocked Up debuted here in 2007, with Forgetting Sarah Marshall in 2008, and now there’s I Love You, Man, which, while not bearing Judd Apatow’s name, certainly has his fingerprints all over it. Let Cannes and Sundance have their fancy, serious opening-night gala — SXSW is pleased to start with a comedy about a friendless guy searching for a buddy worthy to stand as his best man.

It’s kind of a cheat as far as opening-night films go, since it opens theatrically next Friday anyway. But hey, it’s nice to start with a crowd-pleaser. (We won’t soon forget 2006, when they started with A Prairie Home Companion. When has Garrison Keillor ever pleased anyone, let alone an entire crowd?) I Love You, Man is the latest film in the bromance genre (see also: Sundance and SXSW entry Humpday), starring Paul Rudd as a guy who’s always had girlfriends, not guy friends, and thus has no obvious candidate for best man. Jason Segel plays the guy Rudd meets and bonds with after a few hilarious attempts at making friends.

How do adults go about making friends, anyway? It’s even harder than dating — there are ample online opportunities for finding romance, but purely platonic friendships are trickier. (Plus, no one believes you when you say that’s all you’re looking for.) The film mines humor out of that situation and out of straight-male friendships in general.

That loose, semi-improvised style of the Apatow films is intact, as are the sweet sentiments embedded in the vulgar jokes. I didn’t laugh as much as I did at, say, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but it’s a worthy addition to the new Frat Pack comedy canon.

Speaking of comedy heavyweights, Patton Oswalt was on hand to present the next film of the night, something called The Snake. He said that while he was helping promote The Foot Fist Way last year, a couple nobodies approached him and said, “Hey, we made a movie, will you watch it?” He did, and it was The Snake, and now here he is, sharing it with the world, like a comedy missionary.

I’m afraid Mr. Oswalt and I part ways here. The Snake is about a young man who is a cad and a creep, who follows a pretty girl to her women’s body issues support group and somehow becomes a member himself, just to stalk her. She is bulimic; he enables her in order to win her affections. The awfulness of the character certainly isn’t the problem — I enjoy funny movies about terrible people. The problem is that I just didn’t find it funny. A few laughs, a lot of stony silence, and then I left when it was half-over, unable to tolerate any more. I heard a few people say they loved it, though, so perhaps it’s one of those love-it-or-hate-it things.

For the first time, Austin’s genre-oriented Fantastic Fest has teamed up with SXSW to present a series of Fantastic Fest-approved flicks at midnight. It’s a perfect marriage, of course, and the first night’s entry was Ong Bak 2, a follow-up to the Thai martial-arts fight-fest that was an underground hit in 2004 and 2005. Both films are centered around the talents of Tony Jaa, who may be the most extraordinarily gifted acrobat/fighter/stuntman in film history. His seemingly supernatural powers — and the fact that no wires or computers are being used to simulate his stunts — are a wonder to behold.

Ong Bak 2 is a “sequel” only insofar as it also stars Tony Jaa. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the first film. I suspect they’re using the title for name recognition alone. But why quibble over titles? Its fight sequences are dazzling and jaw-dropping, none more so than the one that takes place on and around an elephant. (Yes, a real elephant. Yes, the tusks are involved. Yes, it’s awesome.) Jaa and his cast of fearless extras and trained fighters are indefatigable.

Unfortunately, it runs rather long on plot. The first Ong Bak was notable for its thin, negligible wisp of a story — which is exactly what you want when all you came for was the fighting. For some reason, Jaa and company have introduced an elaborate story here that’s epic in nature and that occupies far more of the running time than it should, all without ever really fleshing out the characters or helping us get to know them. Trim all that fat and you’d have another slam-bang shot of adrenaline, Thai-style.

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Eric D. Snider (website) is in Austin for South By Southwest all week. Check back for more updates.

Tags: i love you, man, ong bak ii, patton oswalt, sxsw film festival