Good Luck Chuck

Stars: Dane Cook, Jessica Alba, Dan Fogler

Director: Mark Helfrich

A bizarre mix of really vulgar gross-out sex farce and much gentler romantic comedy with a zany touch. Chuck (Cook), a dentist, had a hex put on him in childhood by a Goth girl he spurned. Now any girl he has sex with is destined to leave him and marry the next guy she meets.

Trapped on a hedonistic merry-go-round, Chuck falls for accident-prone, penguin-mad Cam (Alba), who works at the local aquarium and frequently falls in its penguin pool. Desperate not to lose her, Chuck tries to avoid having sex, but is duped into doing so by his 'friend' Stu (Fogler), a breast implant surgeon, who welches on a promise to have sex with a grossly obese woman Chuck has just bedded (don't ask).

The woman promptly finds her true love, and Chuck loses it (in more ways than one).

Crude enough in parts to bring cries of disgust from the preview audience, the film has lots of masturbation jokes, but almost no laughs; those it does have stem from its most successful gag idea - Alba's facility for spilling things, crashing into things, falling over (and into) things and generally being an all-round disaster area. Given the rest of the material here, though, the performers struggle and don't show up well.

David Quinlan

USA 2007. UK Distributor: Lionsgate. Colour by deluxe.
99 minutes. Not widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 2, Violence/Horror 0, Drugs 0, Swearing 3.

Review date: 05 Nov 2007