Genre: Comedy/Romance
Director: Howard Deutch
Cast: Kate Hudson, Dane Cook, Alec Baldwin, Jason Biggs, Lizzy Caplan
RunTime: 1 hr 40 mins
Released By: Shaw
Rating: M18 (Sexual References and Coarse Language)
Official Website: http://www.mybestfriendsgirlmovie.com/

Opening Day: 25 September 2008

Synopsis:

A master at seducing – and offending – women, Tank is a professional "My Best Friend's Girl." When guys get dumped, they hire Tank to take their ex-girlfriends out on the worst date of their lives – an experience so horrible it sends them running gratefully back to their beaus. So when Tank's best friend, Dustin, is dumped by his new girlfriend, Tank naturally offers to help out... and ends up meeting the challenge of a lifetime. Smart, beautiful and headstrong, Alexis is the first girl who knows how to call his bluff, and Tank soon finds himself torn between his loyalty to Dustin and his love for his best friend's girl.

Movie Review:

Frat-boy humor and tired romantic comedy clichés do battle in My Best Friend’s Girl, the schizophrenic Dane Cook/Kate Hudson vehicle that tries - and fails - to meld two movie going mindsets into one cohesive comedic package. The problem isn’t in the performers, per se. While Cook’s brand of shtick isn’t everyone’s bag, he’s proven to be a dynamic force for his audience - just not for Hollywood as of yet. Hudson on the other hand, flounders once again in a genre setting where she was once a queen of the screen.

Dustin (Jason Biggs) is a lovesick stooge who pines daily for his ex-girlfriend, Alexis (Kate Hudson). Hoping to win her back, Dustin asks loutish friend Tank (Dane Cook) to take Alexis out on a hideous date to show her how good she had it when she spent time with a nice guy. The plan immediately backfires when Alexis becomes involved with Tank, sending Dustin into a tailspin where he reconsiders his polite attitude towards women. Now stuck with a girlfriend, Tank finds he’s falling in love with Alexis, a perfect contradiction to his professional lothario ways. As the two try to preserve a relationship, Dustin grows increasingly disgusted, leading Tank to reconsider his errant ways.

Whether or not one is able to find humor in Dane Cook's spastic white-boy antics, it is now clear that the man was born to play the role of the asinine romantic. As cynical a purportedly feel-good romantic comedy has ever been, My Best Friend's Girl fits the devilish charms of its leading man like a customized glove—or rather, would appear to. The picture depends completely on Cook’s whiplash way with a punchline, and if that’s the only thing propping up the jokes, the audience might as well pack up and head back home after the opening titles. Don't get me wrong, Cook can be hilarious. There's simply a mystified situation with his big screen acting selections. Cook made up his mind long ago that he wants to be taken seriously as a leading man but this film is a sort of predictable malarkey that kills careers; it’s a calculated attempt to woo the men with genital-based humor and tickle women with some romantic jousting. The formula has worked before, but Cahan’s script is a simpleminded effort perfect for anyone who’s never actually seen a movie before. Misguided and indecisive, Howard Deutsch's film doesn't know what to do with the pent-up sexual energy of its cast, Cahan's script first dabbling in the waters of anti-romantic black comedy before shifting every one of its gears in preference of something more cuddly and whitewashed.

This is one of those movies where supporting players steal the show. Lizzy Caplan as Alexis' roommate Ami is a tattooed, raunch-talking party girl in her own mind; Riki Lindhome plays a Christian high-school teacher whose pure sadness at her hell-date breaks through both to Turner and the audience; and single-scene Disney-TV star Andrew Caldwell, blows Cook away with dead-on trash talk.

Moving dutifully through the love-triangle-pity motions before jettisoning Bigg's character almost completely—only to cruelly and manipulatively bring him back in the end so as to justify a new course of action—My Best Friend's Girl ultimately fails to measure up to its own standards, forgoing the genuinely selfish motivations of its characters for an overly plotted bowtie conclusion, one that runs at least 20 minutes too long and, with the exception of a deliciously against-the-current performance by Alec Baldwin (as Tank's adulterous and incessantly horny father), commits that most unforgivable of comedy sins: a dearth of genuine humor.

Movie Rating:



(A recycled white-washed anti-romantic comedy that just doesn't stand on its own)

Review by Lokman B S