Good Luck Chuck Review

Dane Cook and Jessica Alba make up your standard romantic comedy couple. Their misadventures in Good Luck Chuck are predictable and rather bland. It’s everyone that surrounds them, including Dan Folger, that make this comedy work for a period of time.

The set-up is ridiculous, with Dane Cook being cursed at a party when he’s young. Every woman he sleeps with ends up being married to the next guy they meet, which becomes a problem when he finds a woman he actually cares about. This sets up low-brow laughs upon low-brow laughs that make American Pie seem mature.

If you’ve ever wanted to see Cook romp around nude in multiple scenes, Good Luck Chuck is the movie you’ve been waiting for. The guys who came to see this one get plenty of bare female breasts to satisfy their needs during a long-winded montage of Cook taking advantage of all the women who want to sleep with him. Dan Folger plays Cook’s best friend, a plastic surgeon who seems to be completely obsessed with two specific parts of the women he sees in his office.

The script plays off cheap slapstick, including Alba’s apparent clumsiness that disappears halfway through the movie. When she runs into things, knocks things over, and falls down, the movie is reaching for laughs. The direction is mundane with these gags from first time director Mark Helfrich, and they fail because of it.

Actual dialogue to push the paper-thin story forward doesn’t do anything special either. It’s the obviously ad-libbed lines that make this so priceless. Folger is on here, spouting off one horrifically offensive line after another, and they all work. Jodie Stewart is hysterical in her small role, and makes the movie come alive after a small period of down time.

Disgusting gags come every few minutes to draw out an audience “eww.” Good Luck Chuck is a one-liner comedy, where lines work when spoken at random with no relation to the actual plot. These are funny, though taken as a gross-out romantic comedy, it’s as generic as they come. [xrr rating=3/5 label=Movie]

This raunchy comedy benefits from Blu-ray, though not without issues. Color is vibrant and rich black levels create solid contrast. Whites tend to bloom slightly, and the overall tone of the transfer is soft. Background noise is by far the biggest issue, becoming a distraction. It’s still a decent transfer to look at and sits in the middle as far as quality is concerned. [xrr rating=3/5 label=Video]

New Line goes overboard with a 7.1 uncompressed mix. The only time the surrounds come into play is when a plane flies over the heads of two characters. The rest of this mix is lifeless, even during crowded sequences at an airport or outside in a park. Dialogue is clean and comes through fine, but this is in no way required listening because of the advertised audio formats. [xrr rating=3/5 label=Audio]

Extras are well worth viewing here for their entertainment value. Seven featurettes run for nearly a half hour, including one on the star penguin, and another on the casting for the role that eventually went to Jodie Stewart. Sex Matrix is a baffling look at the various sex sequences from the film’s montage, each lasting a few seconds. A collection of ad-libs from three different characters are hilarious, running a bit long than eight minutes.

Deleted, extended, and alternate scenes each get their own menu which is needless remote control surfing, and the notable one is a slightly altered ending. Outtakes are the overall winner, providing non-stop laughs for 10 minutes. Two music montages and a commentary from Cook, the director, producer Mike Karz, and writer Josh Stolberg round off the disc. [xrr rating=4/5 label=Extras]