They're more than friends, they're bros

The hit-making writer-director behind "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" produced such touchstone bromantic films as "Knocked Up" and "Superbad" and can be almost single-handedly credited with taking explorations of platonic male love burping and swearing into the mainstream. As the Moses of Bromance, Apatow seized on certain social mores -- modern men's reluctance to embrace adulthood, how prolonged singledom necessarily triggers male bonding and how increasing societal acceptance of homosexuality has resulted in men becoming less afraid of being perceived as gay -- to split a new comedy atom.

Each of those three films set the template by featuring certain key bromantic elements: a tight-knit group of hard-cursing, wisecracking male homies who provide one another with emotional support, plentiful bong hits and terrible relationship advice. In each case, the group eventually enables a central character (respectively played by Steve Carell in "Virgin," Seth Rogen in "Knocked Up" and Jonah Hill in "Superbad") to fulfill his heterosexual conquest. And in all three movies, the man/men vs. man-woman frisson plumbs bromance for every last ounce of its inherent hilarity and pathos (e.g., after bickering like brothers for much of the film, the two leads in "Superbad" wind up snuggled in a sleeping bag, exchanging softly uttered intimacies about their love for each other).

But to take the current vogue back to its genesis, one must look back on a continuum of ambiguous male relationship that encompasses Laurel and Hardy (who in some movies shared a bed), "Sesame Street's" Ernie and Bert (who cohabitated in a shared bedroom) and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."

And for those who want a longer view of the subgenre's antecedents, look no further than Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern or Cervantes' 16th century tome about bros living life and chasing dreams -- Don Quixote and the original wingman, Sancho Panza.

"I Love You, Man" traces its bromantic heritage back to the 1992 "Saturday Night Live"-based movie comedy "Wayne's World" -- specifically, to a scene in which Terry (Lee Tergesen), the cameraman and dedicated amigo of Wayne Campbell (Mike Myers), professes his ardor for Wayne by exclaiming, "I love you, man!"

Awkward male bonding and some hugging it out ensues. "Yeah, and, uh, I love you too, Terry . . ." Wayne replies, visibly nonplused by the emotional outburst.