Entertaining love affairs and narrative sensibilities are wisely disregarded in Good Luck Chuck, Dane Cook's latest big screen appearance. Following in the footsteps of such romantic comedy greats as 40 Days and 40 Nights, Dane has helped to craft an equally inescapable pile of turnips. Like all memorable "rom-coms," Good Luck Chuck crafts its sprawling love story with all the right overused genre staples, and none of the attempted ingenuity that films like When Harry Met Sally mistakenly brought to the table.
You've Got Mail had its IMing, 10 Things I Hate About You its Shakespeare - here, it's penguins and topless babes. The penguins, incidentally, provide an arresting visual metaphor throughout the film. Some might go so far as to hail them as the cleverest use of animals-as-thematic-elements since the Gremlins.
Cook takes the lead well, never shying away from the dozens (upon dozens) of breasts that he is forced to fondle. As the title character Chuck, he finds himself the object of single women's affection everywhere: by sleeping with Chuck, a woman is guaranteed to meet the love of her life soon (sometimes the next day). Action-star peers Matt Damon and Jason Stratham often admit to doing most of their own stunts, and Cook should release a similar statement: those kama sutra positions can't be easy.
For her part, costar Jessica Alba brings more volume to love interest Carm than she ever has to a character before. No more eerie blonde dye jobs or skimpy blue bikinis; now she has penguins on her panties, with plenty of great comedic "timing" and "instinct" to boot. Think Goldie Hawn from Protocol with the attention appeal of Pamela Anderson in Borat, and we have something of a burgeoning MySpace-derived comedic superstar.
As the klutzy, nice girl to Cook's suave libido, Alba's the only one he wants, but he won't take her for fear of losing her to his supposed curse. It's quite the role reversal for Miss Alba that never quite works.
From the film's previews alone much could be assumed. Alba bumps into plenty of objects (including Chuck's crotch, which she splatters with hot candle wax), and Chuck's chubby friend rants about the virtues of sex without love (without love it still remains, apparently, sex). What the previews fails to make apparent is the caliber with which the filmmakers address such issues as middles-school curses and obese people falling in love.
The film's high point has to be its raunchy run-on jokes that feature large women straddling the significantly smaller Chuck. "Brilliant" takes it a little far, but surely the well-placed addition of a lobster-devouring, vaguely female and acne-infused 300-pounder was a "great" call.
Good Luck Chuck's main downside is that Cook actually proves he can hold a film together all on his own. Perhaps like The Rock before him, Cook too can cross over from B-list laughs to A-list substance.
Therefore, lest he actually make something of himself in his next Hollywood foray (something he attempted with Mr. Brooks), let us hope Cook sticks to the downtrodden, overused gross-out gags that work so disgustingly well here. It'd be a shame not to see his talent wasted. D
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