My Best Friend’s Girl

by Aaron Helfferich · Published September 19, 2008

One of the main problems surrounding romantic comedies is that they don’t apply to all types of audiences. At the same time, rude and raunchy comedies attract viewers that chick flicks don’t necessarily get. In an attempt to strike a middle ground between these drastically different forms of comedy, Dane Cook takes his raunchy stand-up comedy routine and applies it to the formulaic comedy of “My Best Friend’s Girl.”

Since his introduction into movies, Dane Cook has failed to gain a grip on an interesting film role. By always insisting on connecting his vulgar stand-up routines to feature films, Cook may have finally traveled as far as his characters can go. His character, Tank, is paid to take women on the worst dates of their lives just so the ex-boyfriends who hire him have a chance to be seen as the good guy again. As he is approached by his best friend Dustin (Jason Biggs), Tank finds himself in a moral dilemma when he falls for Dustin’s ex, Alexis (Kate Hudson).

By trying to be two things at once, “My Best Friend’s Girl” fails to be anything significant for either a romantic comedy or a raunchy one. As a raunchy comedy about a man who makes a living being obnoxiously offensive, Cook’s humor adds a double dosage of offensiveness to an already unbearable premise. With this combination, Cook leaves little room for laughs, and more room for unnatural situations.

Along with being a poorly constructed raunchy comedy, “My Best Friend’s Girl” even fails on the opposite side of the comedy spectrum by being a miserably drawn out story about relationship troubles. As Dustin’s pathetic desperation takes a turn to annoyance like Tank offends, the characters become anything but screen worthy. By immediately constructing characters we could care nothing about, their vying efforts to gain the love of Alexis grow tiresomely meaningless.

If any good can come out of this film, it’s in a scene where Tank decides to embrace his bad-boy image to the tune of Johnny Cash’s “The Man Comes Around.” But, after 30 seconds of slow-motion bliss, we realize this new turn of events adds a 20 minute cop-out of blatant vulgarity to a film that could have easily ended on a reasonable note. With so many inconsistencies and humdrum performances, outcome of this star vehicle for an egotist comedian is best defined by its main character’s name.