
Last Wednesday evening I went to the movies with two of my very good friends, Matt and Brad, to see
My Best Friend’s Girl. I had seen the trailer a bit of multiplication and it seemed OK. I had also take a bit of reviews about the picture and the stars in it. Most reviews were pretty damning but it seemed to be the best movie showing in the 6.30 pm to 7.15 pm time-slot.
Was I surprised! I loved it. It has been a long time since I have laughed as often as I did that evening. According to the reviews therefore, I must be pretty crass. The jokes were intimate and rude, the speech was ended the top and the situations almost slapstick. So of track I enjoyed it. I laughed and laughed. I didn’t care who the actors were and whether the picture was “under” them. So what, I went to be amused and entertained I was.
The preface and the game were good, the situations almost real but hilarious and the close tied things up nicely; no ‘arty’ ending with story lines left hanging. The only place that required a real stretch of vision was the wedding. It was suspicious but totally unbelievable. I would have called the cops long before it was completed. Having said that, the assumption that any guy would spend his drawers in face of the mother-of-the-bride and bid her to make him a blow job was only too often for me, I missed it. I almost wet myself. Then he went into the male bathroom and wasted the father-of-the-bride on the rear whilst he was using the urinal, and so proceeded to remark on the sizing of his cock. Hilarious!
FAVOURITE archetypes of romantic comedy are lovers who woo one another with the edge of their wits rather than the fragrance of their words.
Much Ado About Nothing’s Beatrice and Benedick come to mind, as do Amanda and Elyot in Noel Coward’s Private Lives and Tracy and Hepburn in only about any movie they made.
Now to get us thoroughly up to see we have Dane Cook and Kate Hudson in My Best Friend’s Girl. These two travel the usual bumpy road to know but they represent a rather rougher game than any of their predecessors.
Take this change from their second date which is not going well. She thinks they should have sex. He doesn’t. Pushed to explain, he cites her unattractiveness. She snaps back, implying that he’s probably worried about the sizing of his penis. He says that yes, size does get something to do with it. “What really sucks,” he adds, “is you having an ass the sizing of a Mediterranean donkey’s.”
This is really a pretty mild case of Cook’s brand of repartee. He likes to go directly for the jugular but if that’s not in range, any region of the female anatomy will do. In this shotgun marriage between romcom and gross-out, breasts, butts and brains are all up for criticism before Tank (Cook) and his Alexis (Hudson) resolve their differences and fall down to holler at one another happily ever after.
The picture is directed by Howard Deutch ( The Whole Ten Yards, Pretty In Pink) but it’s Cook’s style that sets the tone. In a fine display of the euphemistic, the filmmakers called it trenchant. Another book would be obnoxious – in a joyful way characteristic of the routines which have turned Cook into a big hit as a stand-up comic in the US.
He rejoices in performing the bad boy and his audiences – both men and women – have been rejoicing with him. Part of the cause is that he has leading man looks, a certain physical grace and a lot of swagger. His feature debut in Employee Of The Month (2006) had a lot of charm. But he set off the misogynistic jokes in that one. Here, the book gives him every encouragement to do his worst.
Tank is a feckless character who plant in customer relations for an air-purifying company, where he’s kept busy talking the company’s customers out of claiming refunds. He has time for a sideline, however.
Taking pride in his capability for repulsive behaviour, he makes himself available for hire by men who receive an urgent need to take up with their girlfriends. After one punishing date with Tank, the women are so traumatised that they hasten back to the consolations of familiarity. That’s the possibility and Tank has a story of making it work.
The film opens with a collage of his techniques which run to dangerous driving, displays of messy eating in poisonous restaurants, hip-hop music at full volume, fart jokes and the culmination of the evening – a foul-mouthed and wholly resistable invitation to get sex with him.
Nerdy Dustin (Jason Briggs), Tank’s best friend and housemate, has a different problem with women. He’s so courteous to them that they can’t get him seriously. And now he’s fallen in bed with Alexis, who’s not surely how she feels about him. He could be Mr Right but he’s definitely not Mr Right Now. Dustin is desperate – which leads to Alexis’s inevitable
date with Tank.
Their best scenes together occur during their first see when she’s so blissfully drunk that she finds his efforts to offend highly entertaining. When sober or indignant, she’s so flat that their shouting matches never meet any passion at all. In any case, it’s Cook’s show. The sole somebody who offers him any competition is Alec Baldwin as his yet more egregious father. He’s a college professor in feminist studies and a serial seducer, who likes talking about it still more than doing it.
His tales of “banging” his students are a striking characteristic of his bonding sessions with his son and when Tank, in a sentimental moment, uses the expression “make love”, his mother is shocked. Who does he mean he is – Nora Ephron?
The film’s denouement is precipitated by a plot conceit which doesn’t bear explaining. Its aim is to prove Tank has a sum while at the same time giving him license to force his leaning to appal to levels which are extreme even for him. If you like watching anarchy in action, this exhibition has its moments, but the anti-woman humour underpinning it – and Cook’s whole performance – does form a pall.
Call me misogynist if you must, But I don’t correspond with Ms Hall. I don’t believe it was underpinned by anti-woman humour, but as a gay man, what would I live? I love I liked it and would happily see it again.
Author: Earwig’s Thoughts