Good Luck Chuck Review
by Jonathan Moya (jjmoya1955 AT yahoo DOT com)January 25th, 2008
Good Luck Chuck (The Unrated Version)
A Movie Review by Jonathan Moya
** 1/2 out of 5
The Review:
Good Luck Chuck is a guy's chick flick.
Dane Cook, vilified for his previous smarmy performances, plays Chuck (Charlie Logan) a nice regular Joe with a quiet dental practice. Chuck was cursed by a Goth teen witch when he was ten. She won him in a game of spin the bottle and he refused to perform for the requisite seven minutes of closet time. His vexation: the person who makes love to him falls in true love with the next person who comes along.
As an erotic and true urban legend Chuck has a clientele that crams his waiting room and overtaxes his home answering machine. He goes along with the curse well because it gets him laid- and since he really underneath it all is just a big softy with a squishy romantic heart-it performs a public service for the thousand of unmarried women searching for their true love.
The result definitely sets a cinematic record for the most on screen lovers. A weird and morbidly funny group of sexual positions flash by as quad split screens multiply to infinity at two seconds per shoot and five minutes of screen time. Chuck has so much sex I kept on wondering if there were some digital erotic creations being performed. Any female who might have won an adult film award practically shows up in this movie.
Even though Chuck has all the dream sex a man can desire, he is also unsatisfied. The sex is not the right kind of sex. It doesn't feel like true love.
Of course, Chuck's true love is Cam (Jessica Alba playing perky without a safety net), the gorgeous penguin feeder who is a walking curse-the ultimate example of Murphy's Law. The romance tries to be sweet and honest but with all the mild raunchy going-ons it goes down as awkwardly as a morning after pill after a really good date.
The role reversals provide for a neat conceit-- for once it's the guy who is the sexualized object. The typical horn dog male, Chuck best friend, Stu (played with an obsessive lasciviousness bordering on the pathological by Dan Folger) who makes his living as a boob doctor is the one left lonely masturbating into grapefruit every night.
The middle part where Chuck attempts to break the curse by boning the ugliest, rudest, loutish, fattest unmarriageable woman in the world is the only gross comedy that completely falls flat.
Good Luck Chuck gets a B-.
The Credits:
Directed by Mark Helfrich; written by Josh Stolberg; director of photography, Anthony B. Richmond; edited by Julia Wong; music by Aaron Zigman; production designer, Mark Freeborn; produced by Mike Karz, Barry Katz and Brian Volk-Weiss; released by Lionsgate. Running time: 96 minutes.
WITH: Dane Cook (Charlie), Jessica Alba (Cam), Dan Fogler (Stu), Ellia English (Reba), Sasha Pieterse (Goth Girl), Lonny Ross (Joe) and Chelan Simmons (Carol).
"Good Luck Chuck" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has naughty words and topless women.
Copyright 2008 by Jonathan Moya
http//:www.jonathanmoya.com
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
