GOOD LUCK CHUCK
For Chuck (and the movie he exists in), Brainless, Bawdy and Disastrous . . .
Luck
PopcornReel.com Movie Review: "Good Luck Chuck"
By Omar P.L. Moore/September 21, 2007
Wet and Pathetic, Sunny and Ridiculous: Dane Cook (as Charlie) gets wet with
Ellia English (as Reba), and, right, gets silly with Jessica Alba (as Cam) in
"Good Luck Chuck", directed by Mark Helfrich. (Photos: Sergei Bachlakov/LionsGate)
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"Good Luck Chuck", a ribald comedy, exists purely on fumes.
It is full of either two types of women: blonde or brunette Barbie-types with
breast augmentations, or overly obese women who are vampires. If this,
plus several montages of Charlie (Dane Cook) bedding every lean "bimbette" he
can get his hands on, is your idea of a great movie, then Mark Helfrich's film is
for you. Needless to say, it is no "American Pie", or "Knocked Up", to be
sure, but it does have its bouts of outrageousness. "Chuck" opened across
the U.S. and Canada today.
The method to the madness in "Good Luck" is that every woman that Charlie, a
dental surgeon, has a sexual encounter or relationship with will go on to have a
long-term commitment to the very next man they meet. In other words,
Charlie is every woman's last stop on the bachelorette tour. The trick (or
monkey wrench) is that Charlie meets one woman that he really likes, Cam
(Jessica Alba), an penguin enthusiast and employee at a sea mammal park, so he
has to somehow avoid her in order to be with her, after an apparent hex has been
placed on him from childhood. Cam is as clumsy and brainless a character
as every other women in Mr. Helfrich's film -- forever falling over, bumbling,
stumbling, injuring herself and banging into things and losing articles of
clothing. The director "equalizes" the stupidity of the women portrayed in
the film by inserting the lone sexist and absurdly dumb male character Stu (Dan
Fogler) a breast enlargement surgeon who is obsessed with sex and apparently
with a grapefruit as well. Stu is Charlie's best friend and confidante who
of course gives Charlie all the worst advice a best friend can.
Surprise, surprise, the film isn't nearly as intelligent as it could have been.
Some comedies are intelligent, and others are not. But "Good Luck Chuck"
tries so hard to manufacture laughs by being so brutal, vicious, misogynistic
and empty that it becomes a mostly unfunny and unflattering exercise, even if
there are some loud laughs sprinkled in. Some of those laughs may be
laughs of disbelief. The screenplay (Josh Stolberg) is weak, and the
awkward structure of the film allows for bizarre characters like Cam's brother
Joe (Lonny Ross), a dope head who prances around as an employee at Cam's
workplace topless, to exist. He drifts in to the film to smoke weed and
offer a pearl of advice, but otherwise Joe is a freeze frame character: going
nowhere fast, and like watching paint dry.
Furthermore, the sequence of events in "Chuck" are unconvincing -- Charlie
impulsively spends a huge sum of money in the film's climax; Cam is so
unbelievably clumsy that it would be hard to fathom how she could drive let
alone walk; and Stu is so ridiculously over the top that it is hard -- even in
suspension of disbelief terms -- to believe that such a shallow-brained
professional could keep his mind on his work while being so obsessed with
women's breasts.
The jokes, ineptness and sexual hi-jinks and shenanigans shown here have all
been seen before, and in other much better comedies. "Good Luck Chuck" is
like yesterday's news: stale, smelly, old and tired.
"Good Luck Chuck" is rated R by the Motion Picture
Association of America for sequences of strong sexual content including crude
dialogue, nudity, language and some drug use. The film's duration is one
hour and 36 minutes.
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