Good Luck Chuck (2007)

Starring: Dane Cook, Jessica Alba, and Dan Fogler
Grade: B-

Fun fact, the protagonist is only referred to as “Chuck” one time. The rest of the movie, he is referred to as “Charlie”. Granted, Good Luck Chuck is a snappier title than Good Luck Charlie. Plus, in hindsight, they would have forever been associated with the Disney sitcom had they changed it, so maybe they did dodge a bullet there.

Summary

In 1985, 10-year-old Charlie “Chuck” Logan (Connor Price) is at a birthday party at a classmate’s house. The kids are all in the basement, and they’re playing “7 Minutes of Heaven”. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a game where a boy and a girl are chosen at random by spinning the bottle, and they’re locked in a closet with the intention of it turning into a make out session. Charlie goes through the basics of the game with best friend Stu (Troy Gentile) and just wants a confirmation. Kissing is first base, and second base is boob. Stu tells Charlie that third base is finger or thumb. Seeing Charlie is nervous, Stu tells him that second base is what it’s all about. He also adds that an intentional walk is a kiss on the cheek, and an inside the park homerun is a blow job. Neither knows what a blow job is, but Stu says he overheard his dad comment how he gets one once a year on his birthday. Jennifer goes next and draws an excited Stu. Jennifer is not happy, but Stu leads her into the closet. In the closet, Jennifer refuses to kiss Stu but states she will tell people they did. Stu wants her to tell people he touched her boobs, but she refuses. Charlie goes next and he is interested in one specific girl, who seems to share the interest. Unfortunately, Charlie draws the goth girl instead, Anisha. In the closet, Anisha says she likes Charlie and invites him to do what he wants, but he has zero interest in the strange girl. She tells him directly how she wants to see his penis and takes off her top. Charlie freaks out, and the kids hear Charlie. Stu is proud of him and comments how he’s probably “blow-jobbing her”. Anisha throws Charlie to the ground, kisses him all over his face, and reveals that she’s loved him since the third grade. She rips open his shirt and talks about how she read in her mom’s Cosmo magazine that she knows how to increase pleasure. She uses her nails to scratch is chest, but Charlie yells in pain. She assures Charlie this is her first time making love too and gives him two nipple twisters. Charlie yells for her to get off him, calls her a freak, and breaks open the closet door to safety. As the kids gather around, Anisha states Charlie is not her boyfriend anymore, and she puts a hex on him to make sure he will never be happy. She states aloud for all the kids to hear:

“Around you love will fall like rain, but you won’t hold it. Your heart will pain! Once the girl has been with you, to the next she will be true!”

Stu asks if she’s quoting Phil Collins, but Anisha just stares at him. She rips a piece of hair out of Charlie’s head and storms out of the party. Stu asks if he thumbed her, but Charlie just watches Anisha walk away in fear and confusion.

In the present day, a now grown Charlie (Cook) gets blown by Carol (Chelan Simmons) on a beach. She says she loves him in the middle of it and he replies, “That’s nice”. Carol can’t believe he said this, but he argues the “L” word shouldn’t be thrown around casually. Even so, an angry Carol puts her clothes back on and walks away. Later, Charlie is walking with a now grown Stu (Fogler) and tells him how things fell apart with Carol. It goes back to love again. He wanted to say it but couldn’t because he wouldn’t have meant it. Stu tells him to just lie since it’s what most relationships are based on anyway. Next, he asks Charlie who he’s taking to Katie’s wedding now, and he’s not sure. Charlie asks Stu if he wants to go, and he’s down because he thinks it’s easy scoring at a wedding. Coming out of the elevator, Stu mentions how it’s weird how Charlie dated Katie six months ago and she’s already marrying a doctor. Charlie points out how he’s a doctor, but Stu reminds him that he’s only a dentist. Katie is marrying a heart surgeon. Natalie (Natalie Morris) walks by, greets Stu, and goes into his office. Stu is now a cosmetic surgeon who sees fine women all day and he loves it. Once she leaves, Stu reveals to Charlie that he jerks off to Natalie’s mammograms. They look over at Charlie’s office since they are right across from each other, and Charlie’s clientele is basically all old people. Charlie’s secretary Reba (Ellia English) runs out to tell him he’s late and has four fillings, three cleanings, two crowns, and a canal. She has no patience for all of this and for him to gossip with Stu in the hallway. Stu asks how she’s doing but Reba questions if he was looking at her tits, adding that she’s happy with what the Lord gave her. Stu assures her that he wasn’t, but Reba bypasses this and grabs Charlie to bring him into the office. At Katie’s wedding, Stu tells Charlie to be his wingman. If the blonde asks, he’s the billionaire who invented string cheese. If it’s the redhead, he wrote “We Are the World”. If it’s the cheerleader hottie, he wants Charlie to say his penis is in the Guiness World Book of Records (“Girth, not length. I want it to sound believable”).

After Stu follows some girl who walks past, Charlie sees Carol at a table, and she flips him off. Charlie takes a seat at another table just in time for Katie’s speech. Strangely enough, part of Katie’s speech has her thanking Charlie for being her lucky charm. Charlie is confused over the whole thing but goes with it. The two women sitting next to him try to confirm he’s in fact the Charlie, and he’s even more confused. Regardless, his attention is diverted to the beautiful Cam (Alba) as she walks in. Though stunning, she’s incredibly clumsy and falls into a waiter and knocks over some drinks as soon as she gets by the tables. Charlie gives her a napkin once she gets close and then she sits down at his table. As luck would have it, she was supposed to sit next to Charlie anyway. Cam asks what she missed, so Charlie gives her a playful rundown of what happened. With this, they exchange names and how Cam used to go to college with Katie. When Charlie reveals he used to date Katie, Cam says she used to too. The whole table looks at her, so she explains how it was a drunken, one-time, experimental thing during their sophomore year. Since a staple of this wedding is to do karaoke for some reason, Charlie asks what she plans on singing since he’s doing Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer”. After she jokes that she was going to do the same, they talk about her working at a penguin habitat at Aqua World. He doesn’t believe her and asks what she really does, so Cam jokes she’s a serial killer who kills people she meets at weddings. Going along with it, he jokes he’s in the FBI. Moving on, he tells her how he’s a dentist. She says he’d love her because she has no cavities. Cam moves in to show him but accidentally pushes the entire table downwards when she gets up. The hot wax from the candle goes directly on his crotch and he yells aloud while he stands up. She splashes water on it and tries drying him off in front of everyone, and it’s awkward as can be. Stu makes it worse by walking over to point out how it looks like cum.

Stu pivots to Cam and tries to flirt. Charlie introduces them, and Stu refers to himself as a reconstructive surgeon who is there to fix deformities. Charlie reveals to Cam that when Stu says “deformities”, he means small breasts.

Stu says Charlie is jealous because he has to deal with plaque all day long while he is out making the world a better place, which Cam just laughs off. Some woman goes over to tell Cam about some idiot who tried to pick her up who was actually Stu, but she stops talking when she sees Stu standing there. Cam ends up leaving to go with her friend and says goodbye (“Tits and teeth”). As Stu goes to flirt with more women, Katie comes over to greet Charlie and asks how Carol is doing. Then, they both see Carol making out with someone, so he just comments how they are giving each other space. Katie talks about how Charlie is always a bridesmaid but never the bride, but he counters with how it’s better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Katie replies that she will buy this when Charlie has actually loved. He smiles and concedes that she’s right on the money there. Nevertheless, she just wants to see him happy. She excuses herself for the tossing of the bride’s bouquet. Katie tosses it off a balcony, it miraculously clocks a flying bird, the bird lands on some little girl’s plate, and the bouquet lands directly in Carol’s hands in the middle of her make out session. At work one day, Charlie gets into his office and sees that all his cliental have become hot women for some reason, including the two from the wedding. He’s confused but continues on. At the same time, Reba sees his profile on “perfectmatch.com”. Charlie goes over to Stu’s office and asks his secretary Sharon if Stu is in. Stu pops his head out and tells Charlie to come to the back room he’s working in. Charlie walks inside to see Stu working on a patient, Pleasure. Pleasure has her naked tits out, which obviously shocks him. However, Stu says they need a second opinion on her tits to see if they’re even, but Stu knows they are. He’s just messing around. Following this, Stu reveals to Charlie that he knew they were even because he was the one who did them. He just wanted Charlie to see them.

Charlie jokingly asks where Stu got a license to practice medicine, and a suddenly serious Stu replies, “You need a license?”.

Moving on, Charlie questions if Stu sees anything different about him because women have seemed to be coming onto him in an unusual manner. Just then, they stop and see Carol in a bridal shop trying on a wedding dress. She sees them and comes out to greet them, showing the two her engagement ring. She comments how Charlie really is a lucky charm. At night, Charlie gets home and finds 14 new messages on his answering machine. All of them are women (and one guy) who know of Charlie and want to meet up with him. Meanwhile at Aqua World, Cam feeds the penguins and rushes her co-worker and brother in Joe (Lonny Ross) to hurry up with the rest of the fish so she can finish her job for the night. He takes longer than usual because he just got done hitting his bong. Cam reminds Joe that he will be fired if he gets caught with weed and how they don’t care if he’s her brother. Joe doesn’t think anyone will know, but Cam tells him how badly he smells of it. She also sees something in his pocket, prompting him to pull out the pipe that he was looking three months for. Cam throws a fish at him, but he catches it and throws it back at her. She blocks it, but it causes her to slip down the icy slide. She manages to stop herself, but a penguin slides down and knocks her into the water. She chips a tooth on the rocks on the way in. That night, Charlie picks up Gretel for a date. As soon as he gets in the car to drive however, she jumps on him and is all over him. He questions if she wants to get dinner first, so she asks if that’s part of how the charm works. This confuses Charlie, prompting him to stop to ask what is going on. She details how he’s a lucky charm. If he has sex with someone, they find their true love right after. He has no idea what she’s talking about and doesn’t want to take advantage of her. Gretel appreciates it but tells him not to take it seriously because she’s not. She assures Charlie he’s not taking advantage of her. She’s had numerous loser boyfriends and has tried too hard previously, only to find out each man was just another asshole.

If there is even the slightest chance of Charlie being the key to opening the door for her to get someone better, she’s going to do it. If anything, she’s taking advantage of him. Accepting this, he asks if she wants to have sex before or after dinner. However, Gretel says she has dinner plans.

Just then, Charlie gets a call from his emergency line, and its surprisingly Cam. He thinks it’s her attempt at flirting, but Cam reveals she’s being serious as she chipped a tooth, referring to it as a dental emergency. It’s Saturday night and she doesn’t know who else to call. After she tells him what happened with the penguins, she says she can be at his office in 20 minutes, so he meets her there. He fixes it up for her and jokes about her mishap with the penguins with some corny jokes. After they talk about her obsession with the animal, she sees a framed picture on the wall of Charlie with a group of kids and asks what it’s about. Apparently, he travels to Guatemala every year to help some of the poorer villagers. She says it’s sweet. Then, she stands up, hits her head on the lamp, knocks over the tray, and all the sharp dentistry tools shoot and stab Charlie in the back when he has it turned. She pulls them out and profusely apologizes, offering to buy him a new shirt. He says he’s fine and would rather take her out to dinner (“Trust me, you can do far more damage with a steak knife”). Sadly, she says she can’t and asks how much she owes for the tooth. Charlie persists, mentioning how she drew first blood but won’t make it up to him. Even so, he refuses her money, and she departs on good terms. Once he gets over to the elevator, Cam is there, so he assumes she changed her mind. However, she’s actually there because her car won’t start, as she left her lights on. Charlie goes to the parking garage to jump her car. She turns on the car before he says to though, and a minor electrical explosion happens that sends Charlie to the ground. Either way, he jumps the car successfully and downplays his injuries. Cam thanks him for everything and goes to leave. Continuing with her penchant for being clumsy however, she locked herself out of her car too. With this, she asks if Charlie can take her home, so she can get her spare set of keys. On the ride, Charlie correctly guesses this type of stuff happens to her often. She says her brother Joe calls her “Murphy”, as in Murphy’s law.

To prove it, she shows off her injured thumb, talks about breaking 12 bones, and warns Charlie to keep his distance on account of her luck. He doesn’t think it’s that bad. Just as he says this, Cam gets cold and turns on what she thinks is the heat. It turns out to be the button for the top of his convertible, and it flies off the car. Once they get to the house, Cam realizes she left her house key on the car ring. Not wanting to waste any more time though, she grabs a brick and breaks a hole into her own front door to unlock it. She runs back into the car, flops in when she jumps in the seat, and hopes aloud that she grabbed the right keys. They get back to the parking garage, and she apologizes for everything she caused again. She offers to pay for the tooth, but all Charlie wants is for her to buy him dinner or anything for that matter in an effort to score a date. Cam still doesn’t want to because she’s not emotionally available at this point in time, so Charlie jokes that he’s okay with this since he’s looking for more of a physical relationship anyway. Cam comments, “So I’ve heard”. He tries to pass it off as a joke but realizes it’s not happening. Cam tells him goodnight and turns to leave, but her skirt gets caught in the door and rips completely off, showcasing her penguin-themed underwear. She’s embarrassed and can’t get a word out, but Charlie opens the door and gives her the skirt back without making it any worse for her. Once Charlie gets home, he turns on the lights to find Reba sitting on his couch and freaks out. She apologizes and says she used the keys Charlie left her in case of emergencies. Charlie questions what the emergency is, and Reba says she knows about the charm. Someone posted about him on internet dating site perfectmatch.com. Charlie assures her these stories about him are merely coincidences. Reba thought this too, but nobody has disproved it on urbanlegends.com. Charlie tells her that he will see her at work, but she goes on about Charlie always being there for her. She reminds him about what he said on the card he sent when Reggie died four years ago stating, “If there’s anything I can do, please let me know”.

This is Reba calling in the favor.

She takes off her trenchcoat to show him her lingerie, and she goes on about how her panties are edible. She’s not saying Charlie is for her, but the next guy might be. She is confident she will find her soulmate if Charlie goes through with it. He calls this whole thing ridiculous, and Reba looks like she’s about to cry. He goes to console her, but Reba was just acting. She pushes him onto his dinner table and jumps onto him. The table breaks, and they fall. He’s not sure he can do this, but she says she will do it all and to close his eyes and imagine someone beautiful. Knowing how that hurt her to say this, Charlie tells Reba he will imagine her and no one else. They end up having sex. The next day, Charlie is throwing a frisbee around with Stu in the park and reveals the news to him. Stu can’t believe it because Charlie could have any hot girl he wants and chose Reba. Charlie argues that he wasn’t there, so he wouldn’t get it (“Thank God I wasn’t there!”). After Stu accidentally hits a kid in the face with the frisbee, they discuss Charlie’s lucky charm status with women. Charlie still doesn’t think it’s true, but Stu doesn’t think he should care. Since all women want to get married, he can use this to his advantage to get as much “trim” as possible. Charlie hits him in the nuts with the frisbee and mentions how he hasn’t been laid in the last decade because of his usage of the term “trim”. Stu bypasses this and talks about the idea excitedly, launching the frisbee back only for it to hit an old lady in the back of the head. She takes the frisbee and leaves. Charlie tells Stu he doesn’t want to take advantage, but Stu asks if Martin Luther King Jr. or Ghandi were “taking advantage” when they were doing their thing. He comments how Ghandi was getting constant Native American trim, so Charlie has to explain how Ghandi was Indian to which Stu replies, “They don’t like to be called that”. Getting back on topic, Stu reminds him how he wanted to feel love, so this is his chance. Plus, he will be providing women with a much needed public service, helping them find love. With this in mind, he tells Charlie not to bitch to him that he hasn’t found anyone when he has women lining up for the position and he’s turning his back on them.

Hearing this, Charlie realizes that he is doing it for the right reasons in a way. Following this, Charlie goes in head-first, and his office becomes filled with women who want a piece of the good luck charm. Charlie is fucking left and right. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s working, as each woman finds the man she is marrying right after. Charlie gets invited to all their weddings too.

Unfortunately, it begins to become soulless, as the women are using him outright and have zero interest in making anything happen with him. It’s not as satisfying as he thought, which Stu doesn’t understand. While they have a few beers and watch TV together, Charlie stumbles on a show with penguins on it. Getting inspired because it reminds him of Cam, he deletes all 108 messages off his answering machine and goes to Aqua World to see her. During her speech to the onlookers about penguins, she spots Charlie and smiles. Once she’s done, she asks what he’s doing there, and he goes on about penguin facts he acts like he’s interested in before revealing his real reason for being there. He’s just not buying the emotionally unavailable thing, jokingly asking if she’s dying. He says he can take it if he’s not her type, but she doesn’t answer and just says he should go. He refuses because he technically paid $38 for a ticket just to see her. He jokes that he’s not leaving until Cam pays him the money back. A shirtless Joe interrupts asking, “Is this the dude?”, so Charlie realizes she’s been talking about him. Cam tries to downplay this, but Joe keeps undermining her, prompting Cam to admit she said Charlie was funny, charming, good-looking, and has a nice smile. Charlie jokes he wouldn’t go out with himself either after hearing this. Suddenly, a little girl approaches to ask a penguin-related question. After Cam answers it, Charlie whispers something to the girl, leading to the girl to ask Cam why she won’t go out with Charlie. Joe answers on Cam’s behalf and says she would love to. Cam is annoyed because Joe keeps taking Charlie’s side. Joe argues that he knows how long it’s been, prompting Cam to cover his mouth before he can finish what he’s saying. She threatens to hide his stash, so he stops. She tells Joe to put a shirt on, and he leaves. Charlie again tries to ask her out, so Cam finally reveals the issue. She knows three women who went out with him and is not into dating for sport. She turns to leave, so Charlie tries to ask her another question. She yells she will not go out with him, but he acts like his question was what type of penguin is the one he points out.

It’s a Gentoo, one of several species of penguin who is completely monogamous. Cam looks at Charlie and states, “I hope that answers your question”. She also brings up how mate selection is up to the female in penguins. Charlie comments how it’s like their relationship. Cam gets frustrated and questions why he wants to take her to dinner so badly, so he admits she reminds him of the penguins. They are awkward and goofy, but they are so beautiful in the water. Finally, she agrees to go to dinner but only as friends. Joe gives Charlie the thumbs up as Charlie walks with her. Cam does say there is someone else for the record. Grabbing a book off the shelf, she talks about the author, Howard Blaine (Steve Bacic). He is the foremost expert on penguins, and Cam is meeting him later this year at a conference. Charlie jokes how it’s not going to happen. Even so, they agree to dinner and Cam gets back to work, running into a poster before saying goodbye to Charlie.

Charlie may have found the one. However, his lucky charm hex could cost him the one relationship he’s been searching for his entire life.

My Thoughts:

Raunchy, foul-mouthed, and possessing an uneven balance of mean-spirited humor and a heartfelt core, Good Luck Chuck is a 2000s sex comedy with a fantastic premise but an average execution.

Many may want to write off a movie simply because Dane Cook stars in it, but he’s not that bad as a leading man in film. Really, he’s over-hated more because his stand-up is a mixed bag. When Cook’s talents are used correctly, he can be funny, and he’s a comedian who is actually good looking, which adds a believability to his starring vehicles where he’s chasing a beautiful love interest. As we know, this tends to be an issue with some movies or shows centered around comedians. Since these comics are the stars of their production, their character always punches above their weight to win over a girl far out of their league. Cook is one of the few comedians that can make these love stories where he’s winning over leading ladies like Jessica Alba, Jessica Simpson, or Kate Hudson actually plausible. If anything, the issue is that Cook, or the movies he chooses to be in, tend to undersell his natural charisma onscreen with loser characters and corny jokes in an effort to make him look nice and charming. Quite frankly, it just doesn’t work with how he looks nor the natural energy he gives off. This is a big part of what undercuts the Good Luck Chuck, as they haven’t figured out how to best utilize Dane Cook either. The problem with the movie’s narrative is that it may work better as a less vulgar romantic comedy, as lighter material aligns much better with how they write the main character. On the other hand, if the focus was to always be an R-rated sex comedy, it’s not raunchy enough and the protagonist needed to be more flawed as a person to take the story where it needs to go. As far as Dane Cook goes, he might be a nice guy, but the issue with this film and Employee of the Month is that he’s underselling his natural traits. Basically, he’s too good looking to be playing it straight as the nice guy. There’s a quality about him that just doesn’t allow for it. Even though My Best Friend’s Girl was the worst of the trio of Cook-starred films, that was the only movie that aligned with the natural vibe Cook gives off onscreen.

It’s not that he has to be a douche in Good Luck Chuck, but outside of the sex he has with all of these female characters looking for love, Charlie Logan is too kindhearted to fit the vulgarity of the movie. They even give the character an out to have sex with these hundreds of women innocently, with Gretel explaining that SHE is the one using him rather than the other way around when Charlie expresses how he feels uncomfortable with going through with it. Following a conversation with Stu, the two make sense of it as Charlie using his reputation as a good luck charm to find love with somebody. The viewer knows this won’t happen because the charm is real. Plus, it would be hilariously anticlimactic if he just found one of these girls in the midst of the group to be the one he actually falls for. It’s just biding time. Because of this, Charlie playing this up as innocently as he can doesn’t align with the action nor the tone of the movie. This is a protagonist that needed to have a cool, flawed slant where he embraces his good luck charm reputation to have the time of his life rather than doing so reluctantly to find love. With the way they go about Charlie’s character arc and how Cook generally is, it’s like fitting a square peg into a round hole. At the same time, that is the issue with most of the movie, as its core is much sweeter than they give it credit. Charlie is a good guy, and Jessica Alba’s Cam is almost too adorable for an R-rated comedy. Other than her fandom of penguins that borders on strange, exemplified by Alba’s odd delivery of “They’re so cute. I just love love LOVE ’em!”, the overuse of slapstick involving her klutzy character was practically screaming for a PG-13 rating. It is all too innocent, and Cam and Charlie were too sweet together as a couple for what this movie wanted to be. It’s obvious on their first date when they talk about Cam’s love for penguins and Charlie coming up with the cheesiest responses possible to sound charming. However, she’s so kindhearted, it apparently works, even when he questions if there is a penguin ritual where they eat their own shit.

During their conversation, Charlie looks at her talking lovingly about going to Antarctica for research, how they have once-a-year sunsets, and “You haven’t seen beauty until you’ve seen that”, prompting Charlie to reply “Oh, I don’t know about that”, as 2007 Jessica Alba was probably the finest woman on the planet. After this, we get a moment straight out of a Disney movie where Charlie talks about how he has a feeling Cam would be a good kisser based off of him seeing the inside of her mouth when he fixed her chipped tooth, and she tries to play hard to get by acting like it’s not going to happen. Then, she walks head-first into a pole and falls, leading Charlie to kiss her on the forehead and then on the lips (“I guess I was wrong about the really good kisser thing. Come on, we’ll find something you’re good at!”). The point here is that there is too much heart and innocence in the movie, and it overrides the desire of the filmmaker for this to be a raunchy sex comedy. The Cam character is too good for this. She has a Hallmark core but is stuck in an R-rated Hollywood comedy just so Stu can call a Gentoo penguin a “fag” for being monogamous and relating it to Charlie going cold turkey for her. On the flip side, Good Luck Chuck succeeds in the “love at first sight” trope due to Alba just existing. She can knock over whatever she wants, no man can help but smile and nod at whatever she says. As a critic, we can do that to a fault here, as the only thing we really found out about Cam is that she’s clumsy and likes penguins (and has a camcorder in her bedroom), yet we don’t really care. All of this goes out the window when someone like Cam waits in bed and waves Charlie over to her. Even though the chemistry between the leads is notably lacking, the viewer can’t help but get excited for Charlie when he sprints to Cam’s house as soon as he gets the greenlight from Stu that he’s in the clear. It’s a great moment, and they did a great job with the buildup to this big moment in the story well.

Truthfully, most of the comedy is PG-13 at heart, which is why they should have taken the movie in that direction. Other than the montage of Charlie fucking hundreds of girls, which could have been removed entirely if they wanted to lower the rating and it wouldn’t have affected the movie at all, the only element of the movie that really maximizes the R-rating is the crass, sex-obsessed best friend Stu, played by resident Jack Black impersonator Dan Fogler. For those who are on the fence about the movie, whether the viewer can tolerate Stu or not is likely the tipping point on whether they will like Good Luck Chuck. Lines like “If you were a hamburger at McDonald’s, I would name you my McBeautiful Tittie Sandwich with Titties on Top” are commonplace for Stu. Owning his perverseness by proudly showing off Pamela Anderson’s breast implants that he has in a glass case, the obnoxious Stu is a jackass on all accounts, but that’s the point, as he’s supposed to be the dipshit best friend who says the wrong thing and believes it wholeheartedly to make Charlie look like more of a saint in comparison (“I’ve lost the most special person in my life.” – “You haven’t lost me, dude.” – “Just drive the fucking car!”). He’s basically the personification of “locker room talk” amongst guy friends. It will be a turn off to some viewers who find these conversations disgusting or inappropriate, but it is actually a true-to-life character that exists. So, though the character’s personality may be too abrasive for some, he’s funny if you understand who he is trying to be, and the type of person he is depicting is actually done well. From an acting perspective, I’d argue that it gives him a pass to a degree, even if it’s not for everyone. For someone who can appreciate lots of different styles of humor, I’ll admit that he does get a lot of laughs like his referring to babies as “crib midgets” or his outlandish line talking about one girl and how “I could suck a fart out of her ass and hold it like a bong hit”. Of course, he follows this up by making all the noises to mime it and then he hits a kid with a frisbee seconds after saying it.

Nevertheless, if they did tone down the raunchiness and Stu’s shtick to achieve a PG-13 rating, this movie would have attracted a larger audience. Since Dane Cook was a lot more popular with high school boys and young adults anyway during this timeframe, as was Jessica Alba, this could have been the key to making the movie a bigger box office hit. Their date scenes like Charlie cleaning ice cream off of Cam’s face and then putting it on his own to invite her to do the same and the corny, flirtatious conversation they have in the horse carriage screams “light-hearted date night movie”. Charlie even uses the “What’s sex without love?” line, prompting Stu to take him and the movie back down to Earth to yell, “Sex! It’s still sex!”. It’s somewhat amusing in its delivery, but it’s yet another example of how uneven the movie is with how far it wants to go with its humor. In reality, the movie is too cute for its own good. It just doesn’t want to admit it.

Why they didn’t realize this in the editing room might be the film’s biggest mistake.

With that being said, the recurring joke of Stu microwaving and fucking a grapefruit was funny, as was the ridiculous post credits scene. Though the girl dealing with polymastia was weird, but Stu’s line “It’s like Three’s Company, but all Chrissies, you know what I’m saying?” was hysterical. Even though people don’t want to admit it about Good Luck Chuck, there are a lot of funny moments. First of all, Charlie having the humorous dilemma of trying to avoid sex with a willing Jessica Alba is probably the worst situation any man has ever run into in their entire lives. I literally can’t imagine a worse hell. When things heat up between them and Cam whispers in Charlie’s ear that this is going to be the best night of his life, only for Stu to tell Charlie on the phone that he can’t have sex with her because the charm (or curse rather) is real and she will leave him for her true love if he spends the night is almost painful to watch. Though it makes sense for Charlie to go into full-on panic mode to ensure Cam doesn’t leave him later in the movie, Cook’s overacting for comedic effect is too cringeworthy to ignore, which is funny to think about because physical comedy is a huge element to his stand-up routine. Cook does well with the direction of being as desperate as humanly possible, but it actually becomes hard to watch. The only person who could have pulled off the overacting to this level and still make it funny would have been Jim Carrey. Cook just can’t make it more than amusing at best and uncomfortable at worst, with the exception of him jumping out of the box wearing the penguin costume after the barbershop quartet sang to Cam. That was pretty funny, as was Cam sending him a nude while he’s in the bathtub and he shoves his face underwater to yell as loud as possible before calmly telling her on the phone that he got the picture.

Still, Charlie becomes such a red flag in such a short timespan following the night they have sex that it’s actually kind of hard to believe that Cam would bypass this in the ending (SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS), even though it’s done in a satisfactory manner with the expected but cute gesture of Charlie being the metaphorical penguin delivering his pebble to his mate to call back to what Cam says earlier in the film.

In one way, the Eleanor Skepple sequence is an amusing way for the characters to truly test out Charlie’s charm, as the idea of her getting married is believably an impossibility (“If she was the last woman on earth, humanity would come to a screeching halt”). How uncomfortable this scene feels will actually impress you to some degree. The character is just god-awful in every way. Charlie’s reaction of just taking shot after shot and Eleanor telling him confidently, “I’m gonna fuck you ’til you die” is truly the feather in the cap. However, it still didn’t feel entirely necessary within the story. Why does Charlie need to test the charm’s validity if Stu called all of Charlie’s exes beforehand and they are all confirmed to be married or engaged? Is that not proof enough? Why do they need another test? Even if Eleanor is horribly disgusting in every conceivable way, the 10-30 girls or possibly more all confirmed Charlie’s charm, so why even go down this road? The viewer sure as hell doesn’t need any more convincing. On top of that, “friend card” or not, Charlie asking Stu to bite the bullet to ask Eleanor out to “test” the theory is insane. The last thing we want to do is take Stu’s side, but if they are right and there is a charm, Stu would be stuck marrying this awful woman. Why risk this sort of thing? Sure, it screwed Charlie because he ended up plowing Cam on the basis of Stu’s lie, but why in the hell would he put his best friend through a life-altering decision like that? Also, the fine lines of the charm’s powers are confusing. I don’t see how phone sex applies here, as Charlie turns Cam down attempts with it during the period where he acts like he’s sick for weeks at a time to avoid seeing her in person. Does phone sex really count? It’s more of a vocab word than actual sex.

On a side note, Joe becoming a better character with each scene is not something we see coming. By the time he’s quoting Nietzsche because he’s been using a philosophy book for rolling papers, he has some of the best lines of the movie. His explanation of love driving someone crazy and how they want to be surrounded by the thing they love, relating it to Cam’s penguin-themed bedroom, was a fantastically underrated exchange to set up the climax.

One moment that was enjoyable because of its uniqueness was how they handled the initial breakup. After Charlie shows up to Aqua World with a ring as if that’s the solution, beats up some random guy who he thinks is the George that Cam had a meeting with, and tries to explain how crazy he’s been acting before falling into the penguin enclosure, Cam shockingly knows exactly why he’s been acting this way, calling him out for taking the charm reputation too seriously and let it overcome his whole life. In these types of movies, you never see the love interest guess the exact problem like that, so it was a cool detail. Then again, if Cam understood what was going through Charlie’s head and why he was acting like that, you would think she’d be reasonable enough to talk to him like a normal person to calm him down instead of shutting him out. Going along with this, you do feel for Charlie afterwards. Having a chance with Jessica Alba and blowing it would make me sit in the rain too (“Hey, does our building have roof access?”). It might not have me wanting to get plastic surgery to act like a different guy to win her over or set her up with a dying cousin so I can swoop in right after, but it’s close (“Look around. I can give you tits. You want tits?”).

Good Luck Chuck had potential. Casting Dane Cook and Jessica Alba at the peak of their popularity in a romantic comedy with a unique premise is quite a start. Unfortunately, the film tries to be rough in the wrong areas and limits its appeal in doing so. It’s still a funny movie and oddly memorable, but it doesn’t fully capitalize on its idea, it’s not as funny as it has the potential in being, the main characters are underwritten, and it doesn’t maximize the capabilities of its R-rating for a sex comedy. This is because it’s only an R-rated on the surface. It’s slapstick, sweetness, and genuine heart between its leads and general story shows that the soul is PG-13. Had the screenplay gone through one more draft with this in mind, they may have had a stronger production in totality.