Good Luck Chuck

I hate Dane Cook. I don't think he is funny. Jessica Alba has no talent save her beauty (well maybe that isn't true but she certainly doesn't have acting talent). Romantic comedies are frequently cliched paint by number scripts with forced notions of love and romance followed by an obligatory and forced temporary break up. Given all this, you might be wondering what in the world would have compelled me to go see Good Luck Chuck.

And sadly I don't have a very satisfying answer to that question. Maybe its my near drug like dependency on movies such that even being at a bad movie still means I'm in a movie. Maybe my natural pessimistic disposition is offset by a deep rooted idealist theory that every movie no matter how bad it may look should at least be given the opportunity to prove that it is more. Maybe its just on a Sunday night when I'm too lazy to do anything else and my choices on television are a plethora of crap, I think maybe spending ten dollars on a bad movie isn't any worse.

For whatever perverse reason I did go see Good Luck Chuck and I know feel the need to let you all know just how bad it was. Chuck is a dentist (that's right I have trouble being convinced that Dane Cook could practice a medical profession as well). Chuck has intimacy issues and apparently a curse on him such that women who date him find their true love the next time they date. Egged on by his best friend played by Dan Fogler, who plays a creepy plastic surgeon obsessed with women's breasts and seems fairly misogynistic, Chuck begins to use his curse to his advantage by sleeping with numerous women.

But Chuck meets Jessica Alba and decides he likes her so much he could commit to her. Now of course he is worried about the curse and does what he can to remove it. And in a bizarre turn he becomes a creepy stalker type who somehow despite all that manages to win the girl back by the credits. For a movie that wants to be a sweet romantic comedy there seems to be a lot of very strong misogyny involved especially against women who are overweight. The fairly dreadful actors fumble through their fairly dreadful script and I was out of the theater and trying to think warm happy thoughts about good movies just after the credits started.