My Best Friend's Girl

Originally I thought about taking my Good Luck Chuck review, copying and pasting it and changing every mention of Jessica Alba to Kate Hudson. I mean, the movies looked to be essentially the same thing right? Dane Cook does something with women that helps them find love and he falls sometimes. The trailers show the star girl stripping to her underwear cut with scenes of Cook mugging for the camera and then falling. One has to wonder if every September will bring a new Dane Cook "Romantic comedy" in his version of the Sandler summer. Of course, I kid. I mean these movies promise to be very different. The problem is that while I find his stand up comic routine quite hilarious, Cook has only been good in one movie, and it wasn't even a funny one!

Tank(Cook) is your average every day guy. He sells air purifiers for a living, he has a best friend and he dates. What makes him different is that he "tanks" dates for money. Guys pay him to take out their exes so the girls will come running back realizing what they are missing. The movie opens on such a date. Tank plays a vulgar song on his stereo, talks on his phone to a pretend ex of his. He says he didn't know it was a girl friend's sister he nailed because it was dark. We get the joke. Dusty(Jason Biggs) is Tank's cousin and best friend and he has a problem. The girl he loves, Alexis(Hudson), broke up with him because he proclaimed his love far too quickly. Dusty hires Tank. Tank sets up a meet/cute, playing off the romantic comedy cliche. Alexis and Tank set up a date. Enter problem number 1, Alexis has been convinced by her whoreish roommate that she needs to loosen up and bang Tank. Alexis starts the date off drunk, so she is immune to Tank's usual tricks. She invites him up, but he leaves. However, Alexis doesn't go back to Dusty so Dusty sets up Tank and Alexis to go out again. This time Tank cannot control himself and sex occurs. Dusty decides it is better to be friends with Alexis than nothing at all and soon he realizes she is seeing someone. Of course, Tank is that person. Alexis and Tank are not exactly dating though, they are just bed buddies. Tank wants more. Problem 2: Dusty show sup one night while Tank and Alexis is fooling around. Tank convinces Alexis to go ona real date. They become a couple. Problem 3: Alexis takes Tank to her sister's wedding and the sister is the girl from the beginning of the movie that Tank went out with. Tank believes he is holding Alexis back so he has to tank the wedding. Will they work it out? Who knows?!

This is the first movie where Cook shows what makes him a great on stage performer. Here is a movie where his "Tank" persona is quite like his stage persona and in the two scenes where he is tanking dates, the movie is quite funny. The wedding scene in particular has some great very funny moments. They are also the moments that make the movie rated R, in the trend of R Rated comedies. Tank is a fast talker and Cook is in his wheel house there. If this movie had been made 5 years ago it probably would have starred Vince Vaughn, but Vaughn comes off a lot more likable than Cook does, which kind of is a problem for Cook's good guy ploys. Yes, the prom scene is genuinely sweet and charming, but other than that, the movie misses its mark by a long shot. Most of the comedy is supposed to be mined by shock value, but it isn't all that shocking. Jason Biggs as a masturbation addict, how so very Nineties of them! Biggs has made a career of being addicted to porn. Kate Hudson, who is somehow considered an A-list star, continues to evade me. I do not get Kate Hudson. She is cute enough, I guess, but she isn't really funny, which would be a good thing to be, in a comedy. Am I nitpicking for wanting a comedy to be funny? I do not think so.

I am not even sure the general public is going to find much of this stuff funny. I saw the movie four days ago and I am already missing giant chunks of it. I do know there are no less than 2 montages where a male character has a messy house. I do know that the sex is strictly pg-13. The script is surely a piece of crap considering the only funny moments in the movie existed when Cook was improvising. The wedding scene was straight out of the Dane Cook playbook and that is why they worked. I am not sure I believe Cook to be a comedy leading man or a romantic leading man, but I will say I would rather watch him on screen than Matthew Maconaghey. I know that is not exactly saying much, but it is what it is.

Also, the movie is called My Best Friend's Girl and The Cars once wrote a song called "My Best Friend's Girl." It makes sense to feature such a song in this movie. The director realizes this so he decides he should put it in the movie 4 damn times! The worst offense being putting it in the final scene, then dropping it for the 2 minute coda and then re-starting the damn song for the credits. WE GET IT! It is a little on the nose don't you think? Never mind the fact that the girl is only his best friend's for the first 10 minutes of the movie. There are better places to get your Dane Cook fix, if you so desire it. I can not in good faith ever tell anyone to watch this. I am sure Tank's ten steps for ruining a date will be on Youtube in a few months and you can watch the only moment worth watching for free.

Final Grade: D