Offensive Foul
posted on Thursday, September 25, 2008 in Movie Reviews
My Best Friend's Girl, like Good Luck Chuck before it, has set out to be another raunchy romantic comedy starring Dane Cook. And like Good Luck Chuck, it’s tasteless and crass and generally unworthy of the sentiment that its aiming for. But one thing has managed to stick out: this is a movie that’s managed to offend me. Tank has a strange hobby: he’s hired by men who’ve just been dumped by their girlfriends to give these girls the worst night of their lives. The logic is that after the horrible date with Tank, they’ll realize how lucky they were and come crawling back to their exes. When his best friend and roommate Dustin gets dumped by the girl of his dreams, Alexis, Tank gets hired to help him out. But the plan backfires when Tank and Alexis discover a strange chemistry between them, and even begin falling for each other. Tank soon finds himself betraying Dustin and struggling to understand what he really wants for himself.
The plot basically borrows elements from a bunch of other raunchy comedies and just turns up the crassness to eleven. I don’t usually like to mention this kind of thing, but you can’t get the taste of the blatant sexism out of your mouth. When people cry foul about a movie’s sexist portrayals, you’re supposed to take it with a grain of salt, because stories tend to start from an awful place and end up somewhere better. The people who usually complain walked out of the theater offended before things could get better. But it doesn’t really seem to get any better in this script. Women are portrayed really poorly in this film. They’re all one-dimensional objects who are all secretly begging to be abused and manipulated. The underlying logic of the premise is that women are dumb enough to stay in bad relationships; you just have to trick them. Even Alexis, the supposed angel, the transformative force of the film, isn’t much of a character. She’s a prize to be won, to be fought and drooled over by the movie’s male characters.
But even if you take all that aside and ignore it, you’re still left with a pretty generic, terribly formulaic movie that doesn’t do anything outside of the romantic comedy norm. Are there montages? Oh yes. Pop songs? Lots! A terribly public reconciliation? You betcha! The filmmaking itself is indistinguishable from every other romantic comedy ever made. That isn’t the worst thing to be, really, but the difference here is that none of the characters are likeable, and it’s difficult to root for what are essentially horrible people. Plus, the resolution of the film isn’t earned and comes off as insipid and tacked on.
There are people who really like Dane Cook, and for the life of me, I can’t tell you why. He just isn’t that good. He tries way too hard, talking too fast and gesticulating too wildly to be taken seriously. Kate Hudson and Jason Biggs, who are both far superior performers, don’t really do much in their roles. Alec Baldwin is welcome in any cast, and adds a spark to some of his scenes, but even he can’t elevate this material.
As much as I harped on it in the review, I’m not factoring in my feelings about the perceived sexism in the film. It’s probably not fair to do so, and it’s pretty difficult to quantify something so personal and subjective. So I’m sticking to form, and separated from whatever offense I gleaned from the film, it’s still just another formulaic, crass, raunchy romcom, one that’s also shackled to an unlikeable leading man. The ending is so undeserved that it might leave you just scratching your head. Feelings aside, it’s not recommended.
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