I am going to start this review with a piece of dialogue.

“If I could order you at McDonald’s I would order a McBeautiful titties with tits on the side.” This piece of cinematic gem-dom was uttered by the ‘misogynist Jewish best-friend’ character. He was full of ’em. You probably laughed at that line, which is OK. That means you would probably also laugh when he fantasized about taking a bong hit off of a hot woman’s farts. I laughed in that way where I looked over at my best friend and asked her what we were doing there. I did that three times during this movie.

That being said, I liked “Good Luck Chuck.” The premise of the story is this: Charles (Dane Cook) is a good-looking dentist with the misfortune of having been hexed by a spurned 7 Minutes in Heaven partner in fifth grade. She cursed him into forever being a good luck charm to his future girlfriends. Every woman that he slept with was destined to break up with him and find her true love in the next guy she met. Right as he is beginning to see this pattern, as is every woman in the city of movie-ville, he meets Cam (Jessica Alba), and falls for her. She takes care of the penguins in the aquatic center. I would fall for her too. She even wears penguin underwear.

Their relationship is off to a rocky start because Cam knows that Chuck has been ‘good-luck-charming’ everyone he meets, and she doubts his sincerity. But she’s awkward and runs into things in a desperate attempt by the movie makers to make it realistic that anyone could actually date someone that hot. I found her adorable, personally. I thought Alba was funny and beautiful and handled her lines, which are always bad in movies like this, very well.Charlie discovers that he really loves Cam, and this time he wants to be ‘the next guy’ for her. He doubts the curse’s reality until he tests it by having sex with the fattest, ugliest, acne-ridden-est woman he can find. Yes, even she finds love thereafter. Now Charlie knows that he is naught but a charm, and he spends the rest of “Chuck” trying to keep Cam around before she repeats the cycle.

Alba and Cook make a cute couple, and their kisses are good. So the romance between them is cute, and their comedic chemistry is great. Dane Cook manages not to slip into being a comedian (physical comedy, ridiculous faces) until very late in the movie, which I appreciate because his stand-up sucks at liking women. His character is likeable and generally sincere. As he is bedding his fat secretary, she tells him he can think about “someone more beautiful” while they’re doing it. He cups her face in his hands and tells her he will imagine “only her.” I don’t really see new movies that often, so I don’t actually know if that was sincere or not. I laughed. But I think it was supposed to prove that he’s a nice guy just doing the women of the world a service, at the expense of his own happiness. And sperm.

Now let’s get back to the best friend. He refers to semen as “baby gravy.” He masturbates to the mammograms of the patients at his plastic surgery clinic. He hits old ladies with frisbees. It’s sort of a strange situation when a famous comedian needs a sidekick for comedic relief, but I guess there’s always gotta be someone in the movie to say when things are gay or when Chuck is acting like a fag. I didn’t know people actually said fag anymore. I also didn’t know people still thought that was funny. My bad.

My discomfort with the word fag sums up a lot of what I felt about “Good Luck Chuck.” I enjoyed watching it, except that every once in awhile something would happen that would remind me of what I hate about mainstream movies. But that’s to be expected, considering the fact that I was watching a mainstream movie. My personal boundary line was only crossed once beside the fag incident. I might be giving something away here, but…it was when Dane Cook went down on a penguin. If you don’t have the stomach for that, “Good Luck Chuck” is not the movie for you.