I don’t know why Hollywood continues to make movies where Dane Cook tries to convince us that the world would be better off without him. The smart ones figured that out as soon as he began doing stand-up, but as he was the only comedian at the time who didn’t look like a complete loser when he took his shirt off, film companies flocked to him so they could cater to a female market despite the fact that he can’t act and he’s not funny, which means he can get added to the list of “cliché comics of the late 20th century.” Oh yeah, and Jason Biggs got popular by putting his dick in a pie. Naturally, these two class acts go together in that whole “two wrongs make a right” scenario that’s plagued modern blockbuster filmmaking in the 21st Century.
I present to you My Best Friend’s Girl, which revolves around a business Tank (Dane Cook) runs where lonely, pathetic men hire him to take their recent exes on the worst date of their lives so they come running back to the first “decent guy” that they can think of (lonely, pathetic man…). Now, I like to think of myself as a decent guy, yet every woman I know seems goes for the asshole every time…so I’m already questioning this movie’s accuracy.
On the flipside of this is Dustin (Jason Biggs), who wants to hire Tank to get his love interest from afar, Alexis (Kate Hudson) to be so riled up that she’s desperate to run into the loving arms of Mr. Dick in a Pie. And so begins the love triangle as Tank, in his efforts, falls for Alexis and needs to keep it from his best friend/client while the whole world gets more and more oblivious to every dumb idea this movie put on the back of the DVD case. They go through special effort to display that Tank’s business is lucrative and popular and how he never seems to run out of clients, but he also never actually has a backlog, like he throws his schedule on Facebook so “Lonely, Pathetic Man” (I’m patenting that superhero name) knows he’s unavailable and as a result, that aspect of his life is just cast aside for the rest of the film.
As soon as this whole “job” starts, Best Friend’s Girl turns into a standard stale love story, with none of the challenges that could accompany a relationship with someone whose life is ruining women’s evenings, and all of the outlandish benefits that could accompany Dane Cook being hot shit just because he exists (again…accuracy?).
The connection that Tank and Alexis have is non-existent, they’re originally both in it for sex alone (allegedly because Alexis just needs to get drilled before she commits to a decent guy in the, now worthless, Dustin…but yeah, that idea’s never really built on) and it only gets serious because Kate Hudson won’t take her clothes off meaning in order to climax, the film has to change positions. Even then, there’s just nothing there, no depth at all, no sweet little moments that bring out the lovesick schoolgirl in all of us. Cook and Hudson look uncomfortable together and I probably would have felt more chemistry there if the two shot their scenes separately. It’s just a slow trip through the Tunnel of Love where all you hear are robotic lines and predictable, uninspired jokes that just make you pray for them to turn up “It’s A Small World After All.”
Playing as Tank’s dad is Alec Baldwin, because Stephen Baldwin was too busy doing a guest spot on Survivor and Alec owed him a Christmas present. I don’t know why aging upscale gentleman actors have decided to do little spots in these crappy movies lately (Michael Douglas, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past), but the class and finesse that once made Alec Baldwin such an elite, respectable actor is again threatened here as the womanizing old fool that praised his son’s disrespect for women yet feels he has some insight to present to the predicament of “oh yeah, but love is really worth it. Just ask my ex-wife.” He adds nothing to the film except a big name to put on the movie poster.
With no care or understanding of how a decent romance works, My Best Friend’s Girl, rides along on the R-Rated Adult Romantic Comedy Train that started out with the strong Wedding Crashers and his since threatened derailment with story-of-the-week actors staring in movie-of-the-week tales of love, sex, and “how can we fit more boobs into an un-rated version to ramp up DVD sales among college kids who want to take a break from free porn on the internet?” On the plus side, I called it, for those of you who watched the video: 4 more boobs.
I can’t think of any conceivable reason to watch this movie again and actually had to watch the much better definitely, maybe to get the emotional vomit out my subconscious and load myself up with sleeping pills to ensure my dreams weren’t filled with Dane Cook waving his dick around and wading in a pile of money while movie producers surround him asking when they can dress him up like a woman and co-star with Rob Schneider in some bullshit Adam Sandler wrote.
Because I actually survived the whole fucking thing (though I took breaks), My Best Friend’s Girl gets a depressing…and potentially generous 2 dustbusters out of 10. Screw this dribble; it’s lucky I haven’t put it in the microwave…yet.
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