A high-energy servicing of the randy, relationship-oriented sex comedy sub-genre, Good Luck Chuck feels work-shopped for big business, but beset by awkward tonal swings that seem less a function of story, and much more nakedly designed to try to lure in different demographics. The result is a ramshackle piece of fleeting entertainment that lacks the airy, character-rooted charms of fellow R-rated comedies Wedding Crashers and There's Something about Mary, the films to which it most obviously aspires.

 

The film opens in suitably naughty fashion, when young Charlie gets a hex placed on him by a Goth-inclined classmate when he spurns her aggressive make-out advances during a game of spin-the-bottle. Years later, and now a successful dentist, Charlie (Dane Cook) finds himself unable to find happiness in love. At the wedding of an ex-girlfriend, when word gets around that every woman who sleeps with him will marry the next man she meets, Charlie becomes an in-demand good-luck charm, with all sorts of ladies — from sexy strangers to his overweight receptionist — lining up for a quickie.

This doesn't qualify as a problem to Charlie's best friend Stu (Dan Fogler), a lecherous cosmetic surgeon who has a shrine to Pamela Anderson's removed breast implants in his office. For a while Charlie indulges this casual carnality, but comes to find a life filled with all sex and no love a lonely one indeed — especially when he meets accident-prone Aqua World penguin habitat keeper Cam Wexler (Jessica Alba). Charlie becomes convinced that Cam is his perfect match, but she's wary of his reputation. Eventually coming to believe in the curse himself, Charlie goes so far as to test out its power with the grossly overweight Eleanor (Jodie Stewart), all before a third act that comes back around to Charlie trying to get back in the good graces of Cam.

The directorial debut of longtime editor Mark Helfrich, Good Luck Chuck's chief concept takes a rather dim view of women, and Josh Stolberg's script never really does much to tweak the notion of objectified masculinity, or elevate the proceedings beyond a sort of madcap steeplechase. The movie is studded with a few bawdy sequences, and mixes in some visual jokes (one woman has a "George W" tattoo just above her bikini line), but for the most part it serves as a shaggy, high-energy showcase for the affable presence of stand-up comedian Cook, with multiple set-ups designed simply to indulge character riffs rather than realistically advance the story.

Cook imports a lot of the same wild gesticulations and physical pantomime that are a large part of his stage act. It's occasionally entertaining but also repetitive — a mannered tack which has the effect of undermining identification with him. Fogler, meanwhile, more than matches this tone of heightened mania, putting a wicked topspin on almost all of his dialogue. Needless to say, believing this pair as actual doctors of any sort is a stretch that exceeds the movie's grasp. Mock-sexual deviants take heart, though — an end credit sequence showcases both Stu’s polymastic dream girl (addled with a third breast), and Charlie’s mock-fellating of a stuffed penguin, much to Cam’s cooing, off-screen delight. So there's that. For the film's full review, from Screen International, click here.