Dir. Mark Helfrich, US, 2007, 96 mins
Cast: Dane Cook, Jessica Alba, Dan Fogler, Lonny Ross
Review by Matthew Rodgers
Oh, the hilarity of the sex-comedy! From Porkies to Pie fuckers they only manage to hit the spot lets say, one in ten? The orgasmic highs of Animal House, or the recent Superbad have been mainly due to the beating heart beneath the sticky set-pieces, but Mark Helfrich’s comedy (and it’s lucky to be called that) is bereft of any such notions of romance and the soulless, vapid tale of T&A deserves very little love.
The only Luck associated with Chuck is how anybody greenlit the script, production, theatrical release, and gave Dane Cook (Employee of the Month, Mr. Brooks) the impression he was a likeable leading man. That’s perhaps a little harsh on the Ryan Reynolds lite actor because he is asked to be one of the most reprehensible characters a rom-com has ever willed you to root for.
As Charlie, a high profile dentist who from the result of a spin-the-bottle backfire is now hexed into being a man destined to be the one before “the one”, he is hounded into sex with women wanting to find the post-coital Mr. Right. What’s the problem you may ask? No strings sex for this vacuously vile protagonist? It’s a question that doesn’t even cross Charlie’s mind until he finds “walking door poster” Cam Wexler (Jessica Alba – Fantastic Four, Sin City) and falls in love. Afraid to consummate the relationship for fear of losing the stunning penguin expert (This IS Hollywood but are we really meant to buy these professions??) he resorts to every misguided tactic in his sordid book.
Wanting to be a low-grade version of What Women Want, Chuck fails on every level. For starters it’s representation of the fairer sex is nothing short of stone-age, and this is from a reviewer who finds very little point in criticising Jessica Alba; she does what she says on the tin in a sweetly effective way but is little more than (very beautiful) eye-candy in everything she does. The objectifying of every female character is insulting as they throw themselves at Chuck – one woman is disgusted because he describes her act of fellatio as only “nice”, and an early wedding sequence allows the bride to “thank” him for treating her like crap in order to move on with her life – as if any female in the audience would ever relate to the depiction of women in this tosh?
Every good romantic-comedy requires a couple that you can believe in, that you hope against all odds will make that last minute dash to the airport (check) to save the day. This tirade has already established that Cook and Alba is not that couple, so it’s left to the supporting characters to salvage the laugh quota. Chuck’s sidekick is rotundly generic in a way that comedy dictates (think Kevin Smith in last years Catch and Release - didn’t see it? Oh!), but instead of conforming to the emotional crutch that allows the audience to see the true feelings of our tortured soul, that we so often get, Stu (Dan Fogler) as the malpractice-baiting-breast surgeon is as revolting, if not more so than Chuck. There is simply nobody to like. Even Lonny Ross from the superb, yet shallow, 30 Rock is wheeled on to perform embarrassing shtick.
All this could be forgiven if there were laughs to be had, but Good Luck Chuck is a tumble-weed magnet of a movie that relies on seen-it-all-before gross-out set-pieces and a script free of irony and invention.
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