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.