My Best Friend’s Girl Review

Published by Jeff Leins on: October 4th, 2008

I’m not sure that My Best Friend’s Girl appeals to anyone.

What starts as a comedy packed with shocking and vulgar humor for boyish teenage giggles takes the predictable turn to conventional teenage romance.  However, it’s rated R, so those demographics are almost completely negated.  Anyone remaining who didn’t walk out offended in the opening minutes will walk out halfway through when the offensive humor disappears, leaving a deserved empty theater.

Somehow Dane Cook has found a way to get progressively worse at acting as he continues to show up in movies.  His 15 minutes of fame were up last year and he’s still weasling into starring roles, only to overact and distract from the “flavor of the month” hottie they’ve paired him with this time.  Jessica Simpson, Jessica Alba, and now the overrated Kate Hudson have all been in the worst movies of their mediocre careers alongside this hack.

Appropriately his character’s name is Tank, a jerk-for-hire who mistreats women on purpose to drive them back to their former boyfriends.  But when his “emotional terrorism” backfires and he loses his best friend (typical Jason Biggs), Tank finds himself doubting his misogynistic ways.

Admittedly, the scenes where Tank is deliberately a bad date are funny because the premise is ripe with outrageous potential.  Who knew that being an ass came so naturally to Cook?

The rest disintegrates into the usual romantic comedy, playing out how you would expect it.  But it doesn’t really even fit that genre since there isn’t anything comedic or romantic about the the second half.  There’s no dynamic or chemistry between Cook and Hudson, who still remain as unlikable as they were introduced.  He smirks through all his lines and she flips her hair through hers.

I had to look up her character’s name (Alexis, by the way) because I had forgotten it already.  Hudson plays her like a cocker spaniel might: cute but dumb.  Come to think of it, that’s how all of Hudson’s roles have gone so far, like she’s doing the same trick over and over.  One she seems to have stolen from her mom, Goldie Hawn.

Add Alec Baldwin to the list of actors who can do better than a Dane Cook movie.  Baldwin shows up for about ten minutes as Tank’s father, only to take the vulgarity to the next level.  I laughed, but I cringed a little when the 50-year-old Oscar nominee started talking about gushing vaginas.

My Best Friend’s Girl would only be a good choice if you were Tank in real life, purposefully bringing a girl to a bad movie to push her away.

1 out of 5.