Movie Review My Best Friend's Girl

My Best Friend's Girl (2008) 

Directed by Howard Deutch

Written by Jordan Kahan 

Starring Dane Cook, Kate Hudson, Jason Biggs, Lizzy Kaplan, Alec Baldwin

Release Date September 19th, 2008

Published September 19th, 2008 

Picture in your mind's eye Kate Hudson. Blonde and beautiful with a screwball quality that she got from her mom Goldie Hawn. Now imagine Jason Biggs. The pie guy from American Pie. Twitchy, neurotic far from conventionally handsome. Considering his most recent roles, gay/not gay in Over Her Dead Body, 12 bananna to Paul Walker and a bunch of dogs in Eight Below.

To believe the premise of the new romantic comedy My Best Friend's Girl you have to buy the idea that Hudson and Biggs could ever have been a couple. Then again, if this were the only contrivance of this insulting and stupid comedy, things might not be so dismal.

In My Best Friend's Girl Jason Biggs plays Dusty, a whiny, needy little dweeb who somehow has for five weeks been the steady companion of Kate Hudson's Alexis. After Dusty takes her out to an expensive dinner and fumblingly confesses his love for her Alexis finally realizes just how much time she has wasted. She dumps him.

Returning home, Dusty confides in his roommate Tank (Dane Cook). What luck for Dusty that his roommate has a side business being a misogynist a-hole to depressed women. Tank's gig is going out with girls who have just dumped douchebags, cheaters and jerks. Tank takes the girls out, is a complete pig and the girls go crying back to the ex's who look kind and wonderful by comparison.

So Dusty hires Tank to work his anti-magic on Alexis and.....

If you don't already know where this is going you should consider your mental health alternatives. The plot could not be more insultingly predictable if it were a Dane Cook stand up routine. Directed by Howard Deutsch, who was once the gentle, thoughtful director of Pretty In Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful, My Best Friend's Girl grinds through an achingly conventional plot attempting to liven things up by allowing Cook's Tank to ratchet up his sociopathy.

Apparently we are supposed to find Tank endearing in the same way we found Will Smith's Hitch charming. Both characters are all about helping guys in need right? Yup, they are really alike. Except that Hitch is played by Will Smith with the charm and warmth of.. well Will freaking Smith. Tank is played by Dane Cook in his typically spastic, unpleasant fashion.

As a stand up comic Dane Cook masks bad jokes behind the veneer of gangliness. spasming limbs and pseudo-clever catchphrases. Invariably, ask a Cook fan, usually college age and female, why he is so funny and they will reply that he is "hot". There is no denying that at over 6 feet tall, muscled up and insanely self confident, Cook knows how to draw people to him.

That appeal however has yet to find a film forum. Instead, the roles Dane Cook plays inevitably feel like roles Adam Sandler turned down. He has never seemed natural or comfortable on screen. He strains for every punchline, much like his physical begging for laughs in his stand up, and hides very often behind broad misogynistic or gag reflex humor.

Don't believe the misogynist thing? In My Best Friend's Girl, like the worst of Sandler's shtick, every woman is excitedly in love with Cook. It doesn't matter what a dirtball he is, every woman on screen is commanded to swoon over him. This is the ego of the misogynist. And while some of you will dismiss it as harmless, I worry about the message we are sending to the young girls growing up as Dane Cook fans.

My Best Friend's Girl has an unexpressed bitter sadness to it. The premise is hate filled and desperate and then forces itself toward a saccharine happy ending. Howard Deutsch should know better. Then again, he has directed 3 sequels to films where he did not direct the original. He has developed into a hack and saddled with an awful script and Dane Cook in the cast the writing was on the wall from production day 1.

Kate Hudson's career meltdown is too sad to consider while Jason Biggs is just pathetic. Dane Cook however is a disaster. He was already not very funny. Asked to play a jerk character only amplifies the qualities that make him unwatchable.

Movie Review The Interview

The Interview (2014) 

Directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg

Written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg

Starring Seth Rogen, James Franco, Randall Park 

Release Date December 25th, 2014 

Published December 24th, 2014

I was more than halfway through watching the new comedy "The Interview" on my computer when the darn thing just shut off. I had just reached the scene where Seth Rogan's Aaron and James Franco's Dave Skylark are about to interview Kim Jong Un (Randall Park) and are coming to terms with their potential executions when my computer simply shuts down. Thankfully, the issue was not a cyber-attack, but merely an aged laptop overheating. But it does make for a perfect story about watching "The Interview."

No film in 2014 has been discussed in print and by pundits than "The Interview." Having taken center stage in the cyber attack on Sony Pictures, "The Interview" finally arrives for audiences to finally judge just how offensive the film truly is. To the film's credit, there are no holds barred in attacking the myth and legend of Kim Jong Un. That said, the film is not exactly weighty, with most jokes surrounding a concept called "honey-dicking."

"Honey-dicking" is a term used when one man is attempting to seduce another man by pretending to be all the things that the seducer wants in another person. In this case, Kim Jong Un pretends to be cool and gives Skylark his dream friendship based on what he knows about Skylark's affinity for basketball, women, tanks, etc.

So you can see this is not exactly high-minded satire that earned the ire of North Korean leadership. Still, it's not hard to identify what the real Kim Jong Un might find offensive about "The Interview" beyond the simple matter of the premise, which is his assassination. The Supreme Leader of North Korea is portrayed as a borderline psychotic manchild who loves Katy Perry songs and has serious daddy issues.

For his part, Skylark is an easily misled doofus who falls for Kim Jong Un's act very quickly, only to watch in horror when the dictator shows off his crazy side. James Franco is a pure joy to watch in the role of Dave Skylark with his big goofy grin, oddball slang and general flightiness.

It's up to Seth Rogen to ground the humor of the picture and he does an admirable job. Though I would not in any way call the film realistic, Rogen and co-writer/co-director Evan Goldberg create a strong pace and energy for this off-the-wall premise to exist. In front of the camera Rogen is his typically goofball self, only slightly more mature than usual. Slightly more mature.

"The Interview" is quite funny at times, drawing most of its humor from Franco's unique line readings and the terrific enthusiasm of all the performers. Park is a true scene stealer as Kim Jong Un. Park has the same joy of performance that seems to drive Franco, and the two have an exceptional comic chemistry.

Does "The Interview'' deserve to be some kind of celebrated cause? No, it was merely thrust into the midst of chaos rather than actually being the cause of it. The film is rather slight overall, less memorable -- aside from the controversy -- than Rogen and Goldberg’s far superior films "This is the End" and "Superbad."

Take "The Interview" out of the context of the current controversy that swirls around it and it might not have made much of an impression. It's not a bad movie. It's actually a pretty good version of the bro-comedy we've grown accustomed to with Franco, Rogen and Goldberg. It is, however, aside from the controversy, not that much more than a typical bro-comedy that likely would have faded quickly from theaters over Christmas without North Korea choosing to act as an accidental press agent for the film.