Dane Cook plays a smug
jerk in the dismal comedy My Best Friend's Girl. Strike that: He's only acting like a smug jerk as part
of a side job where other guys hire him to be the "rebound guy" for their
ex-girlfriends. Then he behaves so repulsively that the women go running back
to their former flames. Except that under the layers of Cook's faux-smug jerk persona,
there may well be a genuine tool. If a guy makes his livelihood pretending to
be a pig, then it may be difficult for him to stop oinking when he's off the
clock. The issue gets so confusing that Kate Hudson, in a mortifying turn, goes
off on a monologue in which she spews the word "asshole" about a dozen times in
half a minute. Hey, if it looks and smells like one…
The "rebound guy" concept
isn't all that different from the gimmick in Cook's last vehicle, the even
lousier Good Luck Chuck: In both films, women use him as a springboard into more
meaningful relationships, only in My Best Friend's Girl, he makes a little money
for being officious. (Not unlike in Cook's arena shows, come to think of it.)
When Hudson dumps Cook's socially inept best friend Jason Biggs, however, Cook
is willing to work his anti-magic pro bono. But hard as Cook tries to offend Hudson
on their date, she sees through his antics and throws them right back in his
face, which of course inevitably leads to some romantic sparks. Does he screw
over his buddy, or deny himself the vulgar woman of his dreams?
Of course, there's always
the third option, the one in which Cook gets everything he wants and comes out
smelling like a rose. In order for My Best Friend's Girl to work at all, it needs
a leading man with the charisma to suggest the soulful, lovelorn gentleman
behind the crude serial womanizer. And it has one in Alec Baldwin, who's far
better than the movie deserves as Cook's father, a skirt-chasing women's-studies
professor who taught his son every sleazy trick he knows. The depth of
Baldwin's misogyny is supposed to hold Cook's redeeming qualities in sharp
relief, but the gambit backfires: Baldwin comes off as a bruised lothario,
eternally incapable of getting over his wife's passing, while Cook, as usual,
looks like a stand-up trying desperately to shoehorn his routine into a
palatable rom-com hero. Good luck, Chuck.