WATCH THE TRAILER

GLENN KENNY'S REVIEW (posted 9/21/07)
NO STARS

If raunch-comedy maestro Judd Apatow had not just an evil, but an evil-and-untalented twin, this grotesque excrescence would be his signature work. An unintentionally very apt star vehicle for preternaturally unfunny comic Cook, Good Luck Chuck, much like Apatow's creations Knocked Up and Superbad, abounds in gross-outs of a sexual nature. (Note that I haven't said anything about humor.) And Chuck wants you to buy the idea that, like Knocked Up and Superbad, it's got an actual heart at its core. But it doesn't want you to buy it so hard that it can conceal its truly hateful nature, which manifests itself mostly in untrammeled misogyny.

We first meet Cook's Charlie Logan as an 11-year-old, in a pretty explicit spin-the-bottle scene — a scene that doesn't evoke laughs so much as curiosity as to why Los Angeles's Child Protection Services weren't contacted during its shooting. After Logan rejects the advances of a "Goth" girl, said girl hexes him — he will never find true love, but every girl he chases will achieve her own romantic fulfillment after "being" with him. This curse, which none of the film's characters can remember being pronounced until very near its end, makes the grown-up Logan, a dentist, a very attractive date for women looking to get hitched. Including, in one of two scenes that out-Norbit Norbit in the playing-fat-for-laughs department, Logan's hefty, sassy African-American receptionist, name of — no kidding — Reba. Logan tries to enjoy all the free and easy sex, but can't get the enchanting Cam — a personage whose characteristics seem to have been entirely lifted from Drew Barrymore's character in 50 First Dates, played with remarkable flatness here by Alba — off of his mind. So he has to contrive to win her but not sleep with her in order to…oh, never mind.

The movie's idea of sophisticated wit is to show Cook recoiling from a woman who has "George W" tattooed directly above her pubic hair. Also of (minor) interest is just how haggard Cook appears throughout — one frequently wonders, during his scenes with Alba, whether he might want to consider pursuing someone more age-appropriate. The makers of this picture are betting the mass audience won't be able to tell the difference between this vile concoction and a genuinely funny sex comedy. Once all of Cook's fans, who have already proven themselves to be remarkably undiscerning, have paid their money, the rest of America will be left to make its choice. I bet they do know the difference.

— Glenn Kenny