My Best Friend's Girl (2008) (R) ★

Best advice for your best friend, their girl and even your worst enemy: avoid this one like a bad date.

Story

Yet another in a continuing line of dismal Dane Cook so-called romantic comedies (Good Luck Chuck, Employee of the Month) , My Best Friend's Girl can't seem to decide exactly what kind of movie it wants to be, landing somewhere between gross-out humor and silly relationship dreck. Tank (Cook) is a moronic, commitment-free, sex-addicted loser, who offers up his services to guys in need of keeping their girlfriends from jumping ship. The solution? One date revolving around Tank's intentionally repulsive antics, and they will come running back, no questions asked. So when his roommate and best friend, the love-struck Dustin (Jason Biggs), finds his new girlfriend Alexis (Kate Hudson) isn't ready to marry him after just one month, he turns to Tank to work his disgusting mojo on her. But it backfires when Alexis turns into a drunken, sex-starved slut on their first outing to a strip bar, thoroughly impressing Tank. The complications pile up as the mismatched pair fall in love, and Tank begins second guessing the new relationship he has created behind his buddy's back.

Acting

Cook has now been down this road so many times, it feels like yesterday's warmed-up oatmeal. There's no doubt he's got comic talent and even a kind of oddball leading man appeal--but over and over he is asked to play the same garish guy, an expletive hurling sex machine with no sense of social decorum, manners or even common sense. He's the poster boy for beer guzzling dunderheads, who want jump into bed with no questions asked. He has a moment at the end of Best Friend's Girl in which he finally get the laughs but a little too late. Hudson is also apparently determined to take any script that comes her way, floundering helplessly as the sexually confused Alexis who can't seem to decide what she wants in a relationship: the good boy or the bad. Unfortunately, she doesn't seem to have any chemistry with Biggs--or for that matter, Cook. All they do is shout at each other repeatedly, using some form of the word "asshole" over and over. Biggs as the third wheel just doesn't have anywhere to go with this role, basically serving as an annoying plot device to get the two leads together. The only one who survives with any dignity is Alec Baldwin as Tank's unapologetic womanizing father, who offers up advice to his son that is blissfully politically incorrect. Sure, Baldwin can do this kind of thing in his sleep, but he does it with style, even if wasted on this sorry enterprise.

Direction

Eighties teen movie veteran Howard Deutch (Pretty In Pink) finds his career literally in the tank (pun intended), trying to unearth a romantic comedy from material that just doesn't give him much to work with. Deutch is so divorced from the concept that it looks like he just turned the cameras on and let his stars improvise for the most undemanding moviegoers imaginable (even though there is a credited script supposedly written by Jordan Cahan). To top everything off, he shoots most of it in unattractive, poorly lit close-ups that do no favors for anyone, particularly the usually bright and fetching Hudson. This looks like one of those movies in which everyone is having such a good time on the set, they forgot to let the audience in on all the "fun."

Bottom Line

Hollywood.com rated this film 1 star.