By Brandon Nolta

After seeing GOOD LUCK CHUCK in the theater, I came home and started up my laptop while I made dinner. I ate, cleaned up the kitchen, sat down in my comfy chair (Cardinal Fang even fetched me the remotes) and turned on the TV while I started writing this review. As it turned out, the TV had been left on Boomerang, so I watched DUCK DODGERS while I wrote. I bring this up because, I quickly discovered, that a random episode of a cartoon starring Daffy Duck had more wit, intelligence and taste than this presumably expensive Hollywood project. That’s not to say there wasn’t amusement to be had, but if your idea of entertainment is aimed at a higher level than seeing numerous hot blondes expose their chests and a fat guy pleasuring himself with a grapefruit and a prostate brush—everybody now, eww—you’re better off with TV.

But, you want to know about the movie, right? Well, here goes: Charlie Logan (Dane Cook) is a successful dentist in Seattle, who shares a tastefully decorated office suite with his lifelong friend Stu (Dan Fogler), a plastic surgeon who specializes in breast augmentation and alienating every woman he meets with an unbeatable mixture of crassness and utter obliviousness to social niceties. Charlie is a nice, intelligent, fairly good-looking guy, but he seems to be unlucky in love. To wit, he’s never fallen in love, which may have something to do with a hex placed on him in his pre-teen years by an infatuated Goth girl.

Anyway, the word gets around that whoever sleeps with Charlie will fall in love with and get married to the next guy they date, and Chuck finds himself with more opportunities for getting laid than one man should have. After a while he tires of this, and that’s when he meets Cam (Jessica Alba), a klutzy penguin researcher who wins Chuck’s heart right off. They fall in love, but Chuck’s afraid of the curse taking her away, at which point the movie lapses into the usual contrivances and hijinks.


Romantic comedies depend on the chemistry between their leads, and for the most part, CHUCK gets it right. Cook, last seen by this reviewer playing an utter tool in MR. BROOKS, sheds that role and assays a likable guy, and manages to sell even the furthest reaches of Charlie’s nut-job behavior later in the film. Alba is loose and friendly here, and has a few nice scenes with her pothead brother Joe (Lonny Ross). I can’t say I believed the sexual chemistry they were supposed to have (although I doubt that there’s many heterosexual men that wouldn’t feel some kind of charge working with Alba), but oddly enough, the falling in love I bought. Sadly, that’s the last thing the movie gets right.

For a guy who’s a professional comedian, some of Cook’s line readings felt scripted; the funny lines felt like the writers wanted them to be funny, instead of letting the audience find those lines funny naturally. The real trouble with the film? Everything else—the constant flashing of breasts, the graphic discussions at inappropriate times, the level of jokes; it all feels recycled from the Farrelly brothers or any of their countless imitators, and not successfully. I laughed a few times, smiled a few times, and I heard people laughing around me, but after the halfway point, there seemed like two missed opportunities for one actual chuckle or laugh. GOOD LUCK CHUCK started out well, but the capital it earns gets wasted in a barrage of boob jokes and stupidity. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I got a copy of HEAT on DVD for my birthday, and Pacino and De Niro are calling.