“Good Luck Chuck” made me want to upchuck.
It’s a dumb, nasty, cheap and cheesy “romantic” comedy that relies on artificially inflated bare breasts, maladroit slapstick gags, close-ups of an acne-plagued morbidly obese woman, mean-spirited misogyny and a bunch of no-talents to try to capture its juvenile target audience.
It stars the bland leading the bland — namely those overrated “in” kids Dane Cook and Jessica Alba alongside that blight on cinematic humanity called Dan Fogler. He’s the, er, um, creature (jerk? jackass? insufferable irritant?) who gave us “Balls of Fury” earlier this month. His vile presence alone here should have been warning enough.
Fogler plays the male best friend, Stu, a sexual harassing plastic surgeon who only performs breast augmentations. He’s the sidekick to his lifelong buddy, the dentist Charlie (Cook). But Fogler’s scapegoat jester is really the pretext behind which the filmmakers stand in order to put over their sordid brand of humor. First-time director Mark Helfrich and former TV writer Josh Stolberg let the two main characters play out the nice boy-meets-girl scenario as a mere excuse to allow the id character of Stu to implement their real sleazy agenda.
The high-concept premise is simple: Charlie has a hex on him earned after a particularly traumatic round of spin-the-bottle in boyhood. After he has sex with a woman, she ends up marrying the very next man she dates. Thus, according to this creepy male fantasy, he’s a good luck charm for all those legions of gorgeous young woman who are so desperate to get married that they would gladly schtup anyone for the chance. They throw themselves at Charlie. A montage of his Herculean sexual antics with these hotties is meant to be entertaining (and might have been if only Dane Cook was an attractive, believable or sympathetic guy.)
Of course, Charlie only wantsto be with the one female who doesn’t want him. Cam Wexler (Alba) is apparently the only “good girl” without a matrimonial motive in the known universe. But here’s the rub: If Charlie rubs up against her, then the curse he’s under mandates that she will end up with another guy.
What’s a fellow to do when getting a piece of Jessica Alba’s fabulous booty means losing her forever? More importantly, what’s a film critic to think when forced to sit through drivel like this? Her “Luck” has run out.
‘Good Luck Chuck’
*
Starring: Dane Cook, Jessica Alba, Dan Fogler
Director: Mark Helfrich
Rated R for sequences of strong sexual content including crude dialogue, nudity, language and some drug use
Running time: 99 minutes
