My Best Friend's Girl Reviewed on Blu-ray
By Bill Warren
Yes, this is a sex comedy, a romantic comedy for guys. It's very coarse and direct full of all the usual naughty words, with guys exhibiting very bad behavior of the kind that men often find hilarious. Women do too, if they're watching the movie with other women. This movie doesn't say anything very positive about men, women or their relationships, and switches from crude to sentimental in a heartbeat. The lead actor is standup comic Dane Cook, and the script by Jordan Cahan has been shaped to Cook's usual persona. The movie was written by Jordan Cahan, his first professional sale; it was directed by Howard Deutch, whose spotty career contains some okay highs ("Pretty in Pink," his first movie as director) and some really deep, almost bottomless, lows ("The Odd Couple II").
Here, he's Tank Turner, Boston resident; he's a customer service rep by day--his motto: never give refunds--and a professional asshole by night. That is, he's hired by men who've been having girlfriend trouble: their target women find their guys lacking in some regard, so Tank "casually" meets the women then treats them to the date from hell. He shows up late, is vulgar, sexist and tasteless, always very cheerful and confident about it, evidently cock-sure he's making a great impression. The goal: at the end of the date, the women all declare they'd rather die than go out with HIM again, which makes them, of course, realize what a great catch that other guy is, after all.
Something unspoken in the movie is that by hiring Tank to deceive their girlfriends, these guys, one and all, actually demonstrate (to us, anyway) that they're absolutely unworthy of any woman, much less the one they're stuck on.
Tank's best friend and roommate is Dustin (Jason Biggs), the classic, no-sharp-corners Good Guy, the kind women often think they should love while they'd really rather be with someone with a rougher texture and a more interesting personality. Dustin is utterly smitten with Alexis (Kate Hudson, whose mother Goldie Hawn used to play this kind of role), a co-worker who has problems of her own.
Unknown to Dustin, she's afraid she's on the verge of settling for him because she's had very limited experience, sexually. Her best friend and roommate Ami (a funny Lizzy Caplan), who has had very wide sexual experience, urges Alexis to get out there and sample what's available.
Of course, this happens just as Dustin chooses to ask Tank to use his patented, ten-step monster date technique on Alexis, the goal, of course, being to convince her to accept Dustin's marriage proposal. Alexis, a bit unsure of herself, gets plastered for her date with Tank (seems odd that she's never met Dustin's best friend, but there you go); instead of being outraged by his outrageousness, she brushes it off. This, of course, leads to Tank being attracted to her himself. Dustin turned on the sweetness, while Tank turned on Alexis. Now what?
Now, of course, comes the requisite Big Reversal. On another date designed to be horrible, Tank takes out winsome, innocent Hilary (Riki Lindholme), a religious virgin. Naturally, he takes her to a restaurant designed to offend the religious: Cheesus Crust, a Jesus-oriented pizzeria where the punkish waitress serves cross-shaped Nazareth Specials. Sure enough, Hilary is outraged--but the new(ish) Tank is embarrassed and apologetic. They have a pleasant, friendly chat that's the best scene in the movie (and there's more of it in the extensive outtakes, included as one of the many extras). "In a cruel twisted way," Hilary realizes, "you give couples a second chance. You're a closet romantic, the anti-Cupid."
Now Tank has to try to prove to Alexis he really isn't an asshole, he just plays one in the movies, so to speak. But how will this affect his friendship with Dustin? Things come to a head when Alexis invites Tank to her sister's wedding, both of them unaware that the sister is one of Tank's date-from-hell partners and her groom the lowlife who hired him. Tank has recently met with his father, Professor Turner (a perfectly-cast Alec Baldwin), who actually is as big a male chauvinist hog as Tank only pretends to be. But he's aware enough of himself to explain to Tank that while Tank's late mother was probably the best he, the prof, could do as a wife, he probably wasn't worthy of her. So when at the wedding, Tank overhears Alexis tell her sister that she's falling in love with Tank, he feels that he's not her best-possible catch, either. So to chase her away and to save the sister from her secretly rotten fiancé, Tank runs through all ten of his date-from-hell steps. (One involves propositioning the bride's mother; at first, she's unexpectedly interested, so Tank drops his pants and snaps "Well? It's not going to suck itself, is it?")
This movie received mostly negative reviews; the few positive came mostly from female reviewers, who understood that it's mushily romantic at its core, and that as horrible as Tank pretends to be, he's really suffering from being unable to truly connect with a woman. (We know he's romantic: he gets teary-eyed watching "Ghost" on TV.) The basic outcome is clear, but the scene which supposedly resolves everything doesn't work--Alexis and Tank are supposed to be fake-angry, but it looks too much like the real thing.
Dane Cook, who looks like he was separated from Zachary Quinto at birth, is all too convincing as Tank in asshole mode. He's quick, lively and engaging, even as we're supposed to dislike him. The scenes center on him, not on the hapless woman, really a victim in this case. Eventually, we see him as a swine, so his reformation takes a bit of getting used to. Oddly, we don't have much more affection for either Alexis or Dustin; she's first too dithery, then too slutty. He's a schnook, and not an agreeable one, either; Biggs did that kind of character very well in the "American Pie" movies, but here he just seems limp and inept. A scene in which his eyebrows are shaved off isn't very funny, though it was intended to be a real knee-slapper. And there's no real outcome to his part of the story, except for a confusing scene played out during the end credits. When a potential date who almost unaccountably happens to be nursing a baby asks Dustin if she can get him something to drink, he probably shouldn't have said "I'll have what he's having." Not only is that grotesquely crude, it's so utterly out of character that it's meaningless.
The movie is shot like a drama, making use of attractive Boston locations, including lots of aerial views; it's mostly set at night, with lots of dark scenes, giving it a vaguely grim aura. The high definition of Blu-ray is of little importance or interest here; crisp, detailed photography of this kind of thing is more or less beside the point. On the other hand, the song score, including on-screen music, is clever and inventive--at the world's worst Mexican restaurant, the Mariachi band ineptly plays "Danny Boy;" a Salvation Army band passes by playing 'The Isle of Capri," not exactly suited to brass-band treatment. The source music makes good use of "The Tender Trap," sung by a Sinatra sound-alike.
The disc is peculiarly laden with extras, though my system wasn't able to access either of the commentary tracks. There's a featurette on Boston and Dane Cook ("Making It in Beantown: Where It All Began"), "The Prom: A Teen Rite of Passage," "Professor Turner's Sexist Rating System" plus the "Cad's Guide to Dating." None are of much interest, though the extended/deleted scenes are numerous and interesting, though not so interesting they needed to be included in the movie.
The cast is mostly pretty good, especially (not surprisingly) Alec Baldwin, who in the second half of his career has turned out to be one of our best comic actors. His role here is remarkably similar to Michael Douglas' in "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past," but unlike in that movie, his character here is somewhat wistfully aware that his life hasn't gone in an admirable direction. He tells Tank that as he always suspected, he takes after his mother more than his father--and it's a compliment.
This is a hit-and-miss movie, but it's considerably funnier than its tarnished reputation might lead you to expect. But be warned: it is crude, vulgar and boorish, just like its central character.
(Note: this seems to have no connection other than the title with the 1983 French movie.)
