Tutte pazze per Charlie

If you like Dane Cook then chances are you have seen his movies and while Good Luck Chuck is better and in some instances funnier, it still is just another Employee of the Month. I personally enjoy Dane Cook's humor and I thought Employee of the Month was....decent. I was hoping Good Luck Chuck would be a hilarious smash hit but throughout the advanced screening I kept thinking to myself "Okay well this is funny but it's so typical." Now I don't want to give anything away but let's just say if you've seen at least one romantic comedy in your life then you know the entire story of Good Luck Chuck already.

Don't get me wrong, I laughed pretty much all the way through the movie although there were occasional points where it died down a little. Sad to say there were only a few really memorable funny parts to the movie though. Most was just slapstick style humor and revolting sex jokes. The humor in Good Luck Chuck was by far raunchier than Employee of the Month but then again that was PG-13 and this is R.

I mentioned that the movie was typical and when I say typical I mean every romantic movie cliché possible was used. It was like they took a blueprint for a love story and then just added Dane Cook and Jessica Alba and then made them do funny things. Granted there are moments where they stray a little or add a funny twist to the formula but it definitely didn't take long to come up with the progression of love in the film.

If you want your next dose of laughter after Superbad then go see Good Luck Chuck but don't expect anything new or inventive in terms of storytelling. It is however something to note that there are tons of sex scenes, lots of boobs, extremely raunchy jokes, and Jessica Alba does not reveal any body parts although some side boob can be glanced for a brief moment in the movie. (Just an FYI for all those who were dying to know)

A very uneven comedy. If 3 out of every 10 jokes working is enough for you, then go ahead.

If you're hoping to see Dane Cook (nearly) undressed, you won't be disappointed. He strips more in this movie than Demi Moore in "Striptease".

If you're hoping to see Jessica Alba undressed -- too bad! Scanty attire is the best you'll get.

If you're hoping to see Dane be as funny as he is in his stand-up -- you'll be disappointed.

If you're hoping to see Jessica be funny -- what are you, nuts? She's got no comedy chops! And that old tired "pretty girl falls down a lot" shtick wasn't funny when it became a movie cliché about 5 years ago.

The only funny moments seem to be when Dane is improvising. When he's doing the written parts of the script, it clunks hard. (Him dressed in a penguin costume? Yikes.) The two leads try SO hard to show us they have chemistry (a lot of shoulder wiggling and cutesy facial expressions mostly) that it backfires.

There were a lot of gross-out moments that just weren't funny -- the fat sidekick scrubbing his backflap with a scrub-brush for sexual pleasure, a penguin eating his crap, two seduction scenes with obese women (straight out of "Norbit" -- also unfunny).

The sidekick is so foul and obnoxious he throws the movie completely off-balance. You feel like the movie needs a sorbet after one of his scenes to get the bad taste out of your mouth.

The only likable person was the guy playing Jessica's brother (Lonny Ross of "30 Rock"). I actually think he might have made a better romantic lead, than Dane -- who was somehow off-putting.

Maybe Dane will have more input into his next comedy movie. Maybe that will help.

Charlie Logan (Dane Cook) has been hexed by a disgruntled girl since a childhood game of spin the bottle gone wrong. He is now a womanizing dentist. His best friend Stu (Dan Fogler) since childhood is now the plastic surgeon next door. Charlie gets a reputation as a good luck charm. Every woman he sleeps with finds their dream beau immediately after splitting up. He is enchanted by bumbling Cam Wexler (Jessica Alba). Cam is leery of Charlie's womanizing reputation, and Charlie doesn't want Cam to find her dream man.

There is something about Dane Cook that annoys me to no end. It's some kind of annoying smugness in his persona. At least, Dan Fogler is outdoing him on that front in this movie. Cook isn't that bad in this movie. And there is the adorable Jessica Alba. However it's still not a good comedy.

When young Charlie has a bad experience with a goth girl after a game of spin the bottle, he gets a curse put on him but thinks nothing on it. A casual comment at a wedding of an ex reveals suggests that whenever he sleeps with a woman, the next man she meets will be her true love and she will get married. At first sceptical, Charlie is soon convinced by his friend Stu to ride the "curse" for all he has got which, thanks to a mix of the internet and desperate young women, he is soon deep in "it" on a nightly basis. It is during this period though that he meets the clumsy but gorgeous Cam and finds they have great chemistry – indeed he likes her so much that he cannot risk the "curse" being real and sets out to break it before he consummates the relationship with Cam.

I watched this film because of the sheer amount of bile that it had had piled onto it made me curious to see what it was about this film that justified it. Watching it for myself I have to confess as to being a bit mystified as to why this film was so slated because really it is no worse in regards laughs or taste that loads of other basic comedies that rely heavily on goofy sexual comedy and a weak plot to appeal to an audience of teenage boys. That is not to say that the film is any good though, because it isn't by any means, just that it is not the end of the world as we know it. Instead it is a mildly amusing film that is built on a poor idea, dumb plot and has some moments that are a matter of gross-out style comedy. As such it does the absolute basics and produced the odd chuckle from me along the way but no doubt it was not a "comedy" as I would like to think of it.

The script is poor but the film is helped a lot more than it deserves by a couple of good(ish) performances. I know may people hate him but, while I don't particularly like Cook, he does have a certain charm to him when he gets the right pitch from his material. He does play it too cocky too often (but then he has kissed Alba) but he is still a decent enough person for this type of thing. Alba deserves a lot better than this – maybe not for her actual talent but certainly for her current fame, it does her career no good to be in the sort of thing that sort pretty rising starlet should be getting. As it is her character is thankless and it is, as usual, her looks and girly giggle/wiggle that carries her through it. Having just seen him in Balls of Fury, I quite liked seeing Fogler again – a simple character to provide crude laughs but he plays it well.

I am being kind to this film, maybe to offset some of the kicking it has gotten but please remember that Good Luck Chuck is not any good. A few chuckles are all the casual viewer will get while they suffer the constant nudity and crudity that is aimed at children and no matter how much the cast work it, there simply isn't the material there to work with. Not the end of the world then – just another banal, sub-par comedy.

First off, Dane Cook sucks. I only went to see this movie because I had a free preview ticket. It was even worse than I was expecting (and I was expecting pretty bad, seeing as Dane Cook is in it). There is only one more laugh in this movie than I've ever gotten from Dane Cook (namely, one laugh, and it had nothing to do with Dane Cook's "performance").

Well, at least Dane Cook didn't steal any jokes in this movie, at least none that I noticed. Dan Fogler also delivered an extremely annoying character in the movie. A character that piggish should have been funny, but he somehow didn't get a single laugh from me, or the entire viewing audience.

(One unrelated note here, I was confused how we watched the entire movie and there was only one laugh, everyone was obviously bored, no less than five people walked out and still when it ended a few morons clapped?!?! Anyway back to the trashing this movie deserves...) This movie is being bashed by critics and it deserves it 110%. The plot is based on a ridiculous premise. I didn't notice the written by credits but it was so stupid and ill-contrived I'm assuming Dane Cook must have had a hand in it. On top of that, it's misogynistic (again talking about the Fogler character in particular) to an incredible degree but still can't get a single laugh out of it.

Do yourself a favor, see any movie other than this! Even if it's not a comedy, it will still be more funny. And even if it's a grade two student film made by a mentally challenged kid with A.D.D. it will have a more believable and heartfelt plot.

Looks like this movie has already bombed, which is great because it hopefully gets us one step closer to a Dane-free world. What an awful movie!