Caffeinated Clint
Dane Cook doesn’t just share DNA with Jerry O’Connell – he seemingly owns a part share in the latter’s back catalogue; otherwise how could he have made a film that’s a ‘Greatest Hits of Jerry’?
Dane Cook, Jessica Alba, Dan Fogler
Dane Cook doesn’t just share DNA with Jerry O’Connell – he seemingly owns a part share in the latter’s back catalogue; otherwise how could he have made a film that’s a ‘Greatest Hits of Jerry’?
“Tomcats”, “Buying the Cow”, “The New Guy”…. Anything Jerry O’Connell did that featured booze, babes and bobs has been woven into the quilt that is “Good Luck Chuck”, a rather uninspired thought moderately amusing adult – and I stress ‘adult’, there’s more bare breasts in this thing than the baymarie of your local Charcoal Chicken – comedy that’ll again have everyone asking the question : “Who is this Dane Cook? And why is he starring in this movie?”.
Nothing you haven’t seen before, just perhaps less with a few less melon and masturbation jokes, “Good Luck Chuck” centres on an over-sexed chap (Jerry O’Connell… oops, I mean Dane Cook) who comes to the realisation that he’s merely being used as ‘the middle man’ by the numerous girls he sleeps with. When he meets the lovely Jessica Alba – who works at a Penguin exhibit at the Zoo, no less – Cook’s character attempts to keep it in his pants just long enough to convince her he’s the guy for her. Or something like that… I lost interest about an hour in.
Mark Helfrich’s film is a step up from “Employee of the Month” – the dull comedy Cook and Jessica Simpson starred in – if only because his female co-star is packing a little more up-top (and by ‘up top’ I mean, in the brainacular region), and there are at least a couple of gags in this one (even if O’Connell – or even Adam Sandler – should be taking credit), but still, “Good Luck Chuck” is another of those C-comedies that has somehow snuck past the theatre usher and made its way onto a screen – when it should’ve went direct-to-v ideo.
Though Josh Stolberg (“Kids in America”) shows promise as a writer, and Cook is a little more tolerable in this than he was in “Employee of the Month”, “Good Luck Chuck” still isn’t worth packing the baby in the backseat, loading up the milk, and driving your crammed car down to the local drive-in theatre to check out. At the same time, it isn’t as bad as many of the harder-nosed critics made it out to be (“potty-mouthed and brain-damaged” said Roger Ebert; “A movie that simultaneously squanders its leads and its DVD extras” says Brian Lowy from Variety). It’ll make for an OK DVD (that way too, guys, you can pause all the tittie shots – hmm, spoken like a true Andrew Dice Clay wannabe).
Rating : 
Reviewer : Clint Morris
