How do you get to the point where you’ll sleep with Dane Cook, even if it means that after you do, you will meet your true love and live happily ever after? I originally thought that this was the premise of Good Luck Chuck, the new “comedy” from the genius that edited Rush Hour 1, 2 and 3 as well as Showgirls and Honey. So no, it turns out that these girls are not masochists, but I might as well have been thinking that there’d be something in this movie worth recommending.



The Chuck in Chuck is Charlie Logan (Cook), a dentist with a lucrative practice and the inability to commit. Charlie begins to notice a disturbing pattern, every woman he’s ever broken up with, has found true love shortly there after. Charlie’s friend Stu (Dan Fogler), a plastic surgeon that seems to only do breast augmentation surgery, sees this as God’s send and encourages Charlie to use his gifts to the benefit of women everywhere. But Charlie meets Cam, he wants to swear off all others, but he’s left with a puzzling quandary: how can he be with Cam knowing that when he does, the curse will come into effect?



The movie might be funny if it weren’t so misogynistic and sexist. The worst is when Charlie and Stu put “the curse to the test” by having Charlie romance an overweight, over-eating, just thoroughly unpleasant woman. It’s almost the “centrepiece” of the film, set-up for maximum “comic” effect. But even in a bad taste comedy, it’s in really bad taste and purposefully gross playing on the worst kind of stereotypes.



Women in general fair little better. All the women are just too prepared to throw themselves on the alter of Chuck, purely for the utter fantasy of meeting their soul mate. Worthy goal to be sure, be there’s something so slutty about the way these women line-up one after the other to be taken by Chuck. Not to mention slightly disturbing since, Chuck is, again, played by Dane Cook.



Then there’s the fact that Stu keeps Pamela Anderson’s disregarded implants under glass in his office, which is a trophy more macabre than cool, more P.T. Barnum than Hugh Hefner. The only way he can find happiness is with a woman the likes of whom has only ever previously existed in Total Recall. Then, Chuck’s dream girl herself, is a self-doubting ditz that slingshots from uncertain to easy and eager faster than you can say “Jumpin’ Jack Flasher”. This movie hates women and revels in it as good natured fun.



As you already may have divined, I do not find Dane Cook particularly funny or charming and these are the two things you have to buy in order to get Chuck. Further, any good will that Fogler developed in me through Balls of Fury has now evaporated; how anybody can stay within the same zip code as Stu is the real curse that should be explored in the film. Horrible screenplay, horrible leads, pointlessly shallow with barely anything that resembles humour and you have one of the worst movies of the year. Barely worth mentioning again.