good luck chuck

Good Luck Chuck is the cinematic equivalent of standing in front of an automated pitching machine. It's a generally painful experience.

Of course in this case, instead of being pummeled by tiny leather projectiles, you and your long-term memory have to cope with three-boobed girls, grapefruit masturbation scenes and corpulent (I mean ludicrously, man-eating corpulent) women doing the dirty, dirty.

Would-be funny man Dane Cook plays Chuck, a scruffy-handsome dentist whose member-down-under has the power to grant women instant marriage and happiness-with another man. Adding to the general misery is Cook's inability to portray a regular human being. When he's not mimicking some sort of predatory animal or gesticulating wildly, he's sputtering love-sick philosophies that should have been left to rot on a Lifetime special's editing floor. Combine a sex-crazed, stock side-kick Stu (Dan Fogler)-with his expansive vocabulary of genitalia-related slang-with twenty split screens of Cook illustrating the Kama Sutra and any shred of decency you had left is blown into oblivion.

Jessica Alba as Cam, the klutz love interest who Cook refuses to lose to the curse, is as sunny, gorgeous and bland as ever. And for all you fellows out there still reflecting on the benefits of a three-boobed girl, the only person in the film who doesn't get naked and raunchy is the only one you paid to see get naked and raunchy.

Somewhere in the midst of this slapstick soft porn are the microscopic threads of a plot with substance, tackling penguin research in Antarctica, box allegories, and the message that what is most vital in life is allowing yourself to be vulnerable in order to have a long-lasting relationship built on trust and acceptance.

Unfortunately, the closest Chuck comes to accomplishing this is having Dane Cook dressed as a penguin, popping out of a box to deliver a surprise message via Beyonce song.

It's not that raunchy comedy makes for a bad film. But without the coming-of-age charm of Superbad or the bawdy wise-guy originality of The Wedding Crashers, Good Luck Chuck is just another catastrophe waiting to be shelved.