Review: My Best Friend’s Girl

Author: admin

21 Sep

You know what I’m tired of? I’m tired of romantic comedies about people who have special, magical relationship “skills” that they use to make money. You had Hitch, where Will Smith knew everything about women and could sell you his expertise. Then Failure to Launch had Sarah Jessica Parker being hired by exasperated parents to date their loser sons, boost their self-esteem, and get them out of the house. And just last fall there was Dane Cook as Good Luck Chuck, whom women would sleep with because they knew it would lead them to their soulmates. These movies aren’t all bad, but their cutesy premises have created a new cliché in a genre that already had plenty of them.

The latest is another Dane Cook offering, My Best Friend’s Girl, and it’s a misguided blend of frat-boy raunchiness (which is why they hired Cook) and the usual rom-com tropes (which is why they hired Kate Hudson as his co-star). Yes, chick-flick fans, all your favorite plot points are here — meeting under false pretenses, feeling betrayed when the truth comes out, declaring your love in the rain, and reconciling in a highly public place — but they’re mixed with testicle jokes and vomiting!

Cook plays Tank Turner, a first-class douchebag who, like Cook himself, takes pride in his douchebagginess. When he wants to sleep with a woman, he just treats her like dirt. Of course, this only attracts the type of women who enjoy being treated like dirt, but I guess everyone has a specialty. In his spare time, Tank accepts money from love-struck guys who want him to date their ex-girlfriends, show the women a miserable time, and drive them back into the arms of the guys they dumped. There is a certain logic to it: If you want a girl to think you’re terrific by comparison, set her up with Tank Turner. Next>>