Good Luck Chuck - review

"nice poster... shame about the film"

Good Luck Chuck (15)

Dir. Mark Helfrich

Reviewed by Matt Adcock


Want to pay good money to be patronised, mocked and generally made to feel nauseous? Step right up for this gross out romantic comedy that wastes the weirdly funny idea of a guy – Charlie, the ‘Chuck’ of the title played by the likeable Dane Cook – who is cursed so that every woman he sleeps with immediately falls in love and marries the next bloke to ask them out.
Newbie director Helfrich cooks up some very funny stuff, some very gross stuff, some very cutesy cloying and clichéd stuff and sprinkles it throughout 99 minutes of absolute rubbish. This means that for every amusing scene of Chuck trying to deal with his fast growing reputation as a ‘lucky charm’ for women looking for love, you also have to sit through some mind bendingly gross and unfunny scenes of obese body horror which could well haunt you forever. Yes, bodily function jokes and pratfalls replace anything like a decent plot and the script appears to have been carefully created to offend as many people as possible without being at all witty or memorable. There are points when it looks like the actors are having serious second thoughts about their even being in this movie… If you look closely you might be able to see the shadows of their agents just off screen holding cattle prods to prevent the talent making a run for it. More criminal still is the fact that the filmmakers waste the not inconsiderable charms of Jessica Alba who is given a supremely thankless role of Cam - a clumsy Penguin loving zoo worker, not one to treasure on her acting CV. Then there’s Dan Fogler as Stu, a randy breast-mad plastic surgeon who will surely go down in history as one of the most annoying screen characters of all time.
Good Luck Chuck really wants to be the next Knocked Up or Superbad, alas it doesn’t have a prayer as it flops from one cringe worthy set piece to another, before running completely out of ideas, gives up even try and be funny and resorts to an off the shelf ‘last-minute dash to the airport’ ending
In the end Good Luck Chuck is a Jekyll and Hyde movie – one which punishes you for every few minutes of it that you might find enjoyable with at least double that amount of bottom of the barrel bilge.

Out of 5 you have to go with a sloppy 2 (weak and painful - with sparodic funnies)...

Darkmatters ratings:
Action öö – cliched set pieces...
Laughs ööö – couple of quality moments
Horror ööö –at least one very very scary date
Babes öööö – Alba is hot and there's lots of other hotties too

Overall öö (Bad Luck Chuck)


"Alba shows what she thinks of the script"

Darkmatters: H O M E