To make a good romantic flick, you must include a nice blend of humor, heart, romance (obviously), drama, and realism. Good Luck Chuck contains none of this. Packing in excessive nudity, pointless scenes, unnecessary crude humor, and predictable physical humor in a matter of 90-something minutes, this film flounders from the beginning, flops mostly throughout, and begins to reek towards the climax and the ending. Missed opportunities are much more common than laughs in this heap of disaster, which also includes a very generic musical score, wooden acting, and borrowed material. Perhaps the only good that comes from this is Jessica Alba, whose sexy and innocent charm keeps this movie afloat, albeit barely.
Good Luck Chuck is a totally different movie from the one advertised. The ads showed that this movie was going to be a charming romantic movie featuring plenty of Cook and plenty of Alba. Unfortunately, we get crude Dane Cook and very little Jessica Alba, and then plenty of preventable boobs. The story here revolves around Chuck (Dane Cook), a man who from a young age receives a hex that allows for him to get with women, but whenever they leave him the next man that female meets will be "The One." He takes advantage of this curse until he realizes that he will become love-deprived as long as the hex exists. In the middle of the crisis he meets a beautiful penguin expert Cam (Jessica Alba) whom instantly brings out the best in him.
Explaining why the film fails would require a lot more words than allowed, so let's just point out the major issues. Let's begin with the writing. It was a good idea turned sour with filler material, terrible jokes, and no heart. Our main character isn't exactly likable until he is on the brink of destruction over our lead female. Chuck's best friend is an even more disgustingly awful character in more ways than one. The lack of chemistry between everybody in the movie is a major concern, but between the two best friends is far beyond awful. The only consistently likable character once again is Cam. Attempting to reach the college crowd, we see plenty of cleavage, undressing, and Frat pack-style humor. Unfortunately, it fails to bring in the heart and good content that the recent Frat Pack movies contain. Unlike the adult comedies we've seen recently, this movie tries much too hard to earn the "R" rating, and it only takes away from its appeal. Has too much crudeness to be considered a date movie, even with its romantic plot entangled.
Dane Cook is overrated on stand-up, and not any better on-screen. Perhaps with good direction, we can see a decent romantic comedic lead out of him, but that is about it. His improvising fails, his line are sometimes delivered flat, and he just doesn't have the charm that we see in Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, or Seth Rogen. On the other hand, Jessica Alba pulls a nice performance as the beautiful yet hard-to-get Cam. A noteworthy oddity is that in the previews it shows that she is very clumsy, yet in the film it's a trait that becomes quickly forgotten. She handles herself well with the little material she is given, as she gives the movie its bit of energy that it desperately needs time and time again. Every other female in the movie was in it only because her jugs were a respectable size or in order to be ridiculed by everyone else.
The main issue of Good Luck Chuck is that it is totally unaware of what it is; it is unsure of what kind of movie it should bethen it winds up failing on every genre it tried imitating. Trailer shows it's a quirky romantic comedyfailure. Then in the movie we see an attempt to gross us out, an attempt to arose us with all the nudity, then tries to teach us about love by offering a bit of sentimental valuefailure. Fires on all cylinders but miss every single time. It is extremely hard to take this movie seriously in terms of the lovey-dovey material when we see an entire montage of Dane Cook sleeping with different women or there is a moment dedicated to seeing a penguin eating his own feces.
First-time director Mark Helfrich should know better than to riddle this good idea with clichés, explored ideas, and Dane Cook material. Helfrich has been in the business for a very long time, and could have really spun this short story by Steve Glenn into a creative romantic comedy. Instead, it tries much too hard to be like Old School, Wedding Crashers, 40-Year-Old Virgin, and other R-comedies that have helmed a good amount of money. To be able to predict the next several scenes in the movie is never really a good sign either.
Bottom Line: A mess from start to finish, we once again see Dane Cook trying to transfer his success from the mic into the movie screens but with no success at all. It does not help that he has an untalented cast of writers and cameramen behind this trash, but Cook's inability to expand his brand of humor isn't exactly easy to work with either. Besides Alba, there are no admirable traits in this movie, and that even includes the grotesque amount of nudityand the critic reviewing this is a male. It takes guts to destroy a film that has beautiful women in almost every scene, but Good Luck Chuck does exactly that. If it had stuck to what the trailer was presenting, there could have been some hope. Good Luck Chuck ends up being like the best friend in the movie: crude, offensive, unworthy, pointless, and just all-around an annoyance. Skip this pile of fish droppings.
