Cynical Cinema

Often, you can tell a lot about a movie from the previews that are shown on the DVD before it begins. In the case of Good Luck Chuck, the distributors are saying “if you like Good Luck Chuck, you might also like Delta Farce, Waiting, Employee of the Month, and Andy Dick movies”. In other words, if you like Good Luck Chuck, you might have the IQ of a pomegranate. If, after learning all this from the previews, you still go ahead and watch the movie, you might come out with an IQ at least twelve points lower. And descend on the intelligence scale from “pomegranate” to “bag of hammers”. Please don’t watch this movie. Please don’t rent it for anyone. Please don’t encourage people to make more movies like this one. And above all, stop encouraging Dane Cook! He seems to be the latest “it” comic. People all over the place tell me about Dane Cook and how great he is. My sister got me a couple of his CDs. My co-worker Amanda sings his praises every time we work at a leather sale together. I have tried. I have listened to the CDs, I have checked out his stand-up act on youtube. But I’m just not there.

And now I have seen four of his movies. One is Good Luck Chuck. Two others are Waiting and Employee of the Month, both advertised in the previews on this DVD. All three absolute wastes of time, but only one is a true disaster, and that is Good Luck Chuck. (The fourth, incidentally, is the average at best Mr. Brooks, where Dane Cook is fairly decent because no one asks him to be funny.) Good Luck Chuck stars Cook as a man who seems to be a good luck charm for women. You see, every woman who sleeps with him immediately marries the next man she dates. This assumes two things. That a man who has the golden ticket to sleep with any hot woman he wants, any time he wants, without any expectation, ever, of committment, can’t possibly be satisfied and wants to find true love. And secondly, that every woman is so desperate for marriage that she will do anything just to meet a guy and have a wedding. I would like to have seen this movie done a bit differently. Like, women find out that if a certain guy runs over their foot with a certain lawnmower, they will instantly have a wedding. Then, we could see a bunch of women falling all over themselves to sneakily place their foot under the lawnmower blade. And then hilarity would ensue when ooops! Right guy, wrong lawnmower. No you have no love and no foot. Hilarious!

That is about the level of the comedy in Good Luck Chuck. Jessica Alba is another problem. She is on the cover of every magazine, and for some reason the world at large seems to think that it’s between her and Jessica Simpson for the title of Hottest Entertainer In The World. (And Dane Cook has somehow managed to get his talentless ass into starring roles opposite both of them.) But Jessica Alba (with the exception of Sin City) has never been in a good movie. And she has never been a good actress. She has been a good-enough, really hot face and body for poor excuses for movies like this one. In this one, she is asked to do physical comedy, as her character is a complete klutz. This is the “comedy” portion of the “romantic comedy” tag line to the film. She slips on a bun, falls backwards ont her chair, which breaks, and she catches the edge of the tablecloth on the way down, which spills orange juice upon the ground, upon which she slips as she gets up, causing her to fall full body on the table, which breaks the table on one side, causing the other side to fly up in the air, causing the cake to catapult off into the air, which then hits someone in the face, and that person spins around, hitting a … well, you get the idea. This scene may or may not have happened exactly like this, I stopped paying attention after six minutes.

I tuned back in when the physical comedy thing got old for them. Which was an hour after it got old for everyone else. At this point the director clearly thought “what else has worked in comedies lately?” And came up with gross-out humour! Of course, he is wrong. Gross-out humour has NOT worked in comedies lately. It has simply grossed people out. And it has not been funny. I am wracking my brain trying to figure out when, since There’s Something About Mary, has gross-out humour actually been funny. I’m coming up empty. Again, putting a woman in a fat suit in a movie in indicative of the fact that no REAL fat woman would lower herself to take that role. Therefore, that role is too offensive and not funny enough to be in your movie. And this movie is too offensive and not funny enough to be on DVD, let alone in your house, on your TV. Don’t encourage these people. Put a stop to it now.

I just received a DVD called The Best Of Comedy Central Presents. It’s eight comedians, each doing a half hour stand-up show on Comedy Central Presents, and brought directly to DVD as a collection courtesy of Paramount. It is hit and miss, much like most comedians. It’s presented in a three-hour, uninterrupted show, broken up by the outros to comercials and the intros back from commercials. You would think Comedy Central could take this stuff out, just like they have taken out the commercials themselves. It’s just distracting and breaks up some fine performances. And some lousy ones. I would recommend the disc, But I would recommend selecting just the individual performances of the good comics, and leaving out the other ones. These are the eight comics:

Lewis Black. Unfortunately, the DVD starts with his show, and it is the best one on here. I am just an enormous fan of Lewis Black, his delivery is superb, his material is smart, and no one delivers a punch line quite like Black with his pointed finger and his growly, focussed anger. Hilarious stuff, but I would have liked to see this one close it out. It starts off the DVD at it’s highest point, and it’s tough to get better from here. This is one of the classic Black bits, the one about seeing a Starbucks in the same building, only across the street, from another Starbucks, and how that clearly signals the end of the world. Amen.

Dane Cook. The DVD goes from the high point to the low point. I still don’t get Dane Cook. I think maybe the appeal of Cook is that…he is kind of attractive? For a comic? Most of them are fairly ugly. Cook is muscular and good-looking enough to be cast as Jessica Simpson’s love interest. And Jessica Alba’s. And, one can only assume, soon enough Jessica Biel’s and Jessica Rabbit’s and maybe Sarah Jessica Parker’s. In this one he imitates an alien from Alien, a snake…none of it is funny, it goes on too long, and I just don’t get it!

Jeff Dunham. If there is anything that smacks of “dated”, it’s vaudeville routines. Second only to vaudeville is ventriloquism. Jeff Dunham is a ventriloquist. He is a fairly good one, although he tries to go too fast and slips up every now and then. His material might seem clever and racy, and he can get away with it because it comes out of a puppet and not him, and he just has to look shocked at what the puppet says, but after watching the rest of the guys on this DVD, there isn’t anything that shocking about what his puppets say. For his act to work, he should be far more offensive, and I just don’t think he has it in him. Pretty boring.

Jim Gaffigan. A pleasant surprise for me. Jim Gaffigan is very funny. I had not seen him before, and his material is very clever, very well-worded, and delivered in a great, almost-incredulous manner. The biggest surprise on the disc, I have seen Gaffigan in small roles in a movie or two, but never doing stand-up, and he is a welcome inclusion here.

Mitch Hedberg. I have always liked Mitch Hedberg. His delivery is stoner-slow, not Steven Wright slow, but laid back and solid. His material is very good, and just about every line he says is funny. The best bit in this set is about his neighbour who would bang on the wall when he played his music too loud. And Hedberg yells back “go around!” Every line is great, and his delivery may just be the best of the bunch. But I still prefer Lewis Black. Because I love him.

Demetri Martin. Again, a guy I have never seen before doing stand-up. In fact, I had never seen Martin before, anywhere. And he’s pretty good. He uses props, but not Carrot-Top type obnoxious props, just a big paper pad like the kind your boss brings to your board meetings, and a few well-placed surprise “guests” toward the end of his set. Not classic material, but worth watching once. Also a very laid-back kind of comic, real smooth delivery and some good material.

Carlos Mencia. Again, a guy I just don’t understand. What is the appeal of this man? I guess it’s the fact that he will cross all lines, insult every race, say terribly shocking, politically incorrect things? But…if he is constantly telling you how controversial he is, if he hits you over the head with the fact that he insults everybody…no, really. Everybody. Ummm…we get it. Get on with the funny stuff. But he doesn’t seem to have much funny stuff to say. He appears to have no original material at all, so he just insults people and stereotypes groups. Frankly, I don’t mind this kind of humour if it is done with wit and inciciveness, a la Sarah Silverman, but Mencia isn’t even close to that level. Skip him.

Brian Regan. It seems sad to me that the Comedy Central people chose to end this DVD with the most bland and blase of all the comedians. Better than Dane Cook, better than Carlos Mencia, but nowhere near as good as Hedberg or Black. Very run-of-the-mill routine, mostly about food, and with a few very good jokes here and there. Sort of a let-down. I would watch him, but I would watch him first.

In fact, here is the order in which the comics should have been presented:
Brian Regan
Jim Gaffigan
Demetri Martin
Mitch Hedberg
Lewis Black
No Cook or Dunham or Mencia. Just those five, and that way you start slow, move up, come down a little again, then hit the big ones to close. That is how I recommend setting up your DVD player for this one. In this order, well worth it!