BEFORE: Kicking off the second half of this year's romance chain, Alec Baldwin carries over from "Prelude to a Kiss". Today's film got stranded as a "leftover" last time after I watched "Good Luck Chuck". Or maybe it came to my attention just after I watched "Good Luck Chuck", it's hard to remember. But the point is that it would have been EASY to get here from there, and often my linking system is anything but easy. This week is about catching up on romances from the previous two decades that have somehow fallen through the cracks of previous Februarys. I've cobbled a bunch of these stranded films together this time around, and I put together a new chain from the remains of whatever didn't fit into the old chains. I'm going to have to do the same thing this October when Halloween rolls around, as it inevitably will.
The good news is that once I determined what I'd missed before, and strung those films together, adding what I needed to add to join those little bricks together, the vast majority of those films were available SOMEWHERE, it might not have been the same channel or streaming service where it was before, but at least every film is available somewhere, so I'm going to be OK again, at least for this year. Hey, there's always iTunes, too - I think I'm going to have to rent 2 or 3 films there to make it through March, but that's just what I'll have to do.
Oh, and I think I'm definitely moving my DocFest to April this year, it's really the only way to link out of my Easter film. It's just 15 documentaries right now, which takes me to about April 24, but it's possible I might squeeze a few more into that chain. The key question, though, is how to get from there to Mother's Day on May 9. I've got about 6 or 8 films on topic for Mother's Day, I'll leave it up to fate and the linking system which one(s) will be watched this year. It's impossible to program the whole year, but if I just program from one holiday to the next, chances are good that when put together, those chains could fill up the whole Movie Year.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Good Luck Chuck" (Movie #4,071)
THE PLOT: Tank faces the ultimate test of friendship when his best friend hires him to take his ex-girlfriend out on a lousy date to make her realize how great her former boyfriend is.
AFTER: It's the opposite film to "Good Luck Chuck", which was released a year before this one. In that film, Dane Cook plays an asshole who dates a lot of women who then go on to meet the love of their lives right after him. In this film, Dane Cook plays an asshole who dates a lot of women who then realize that the love of their lives was the man they dated right BEFORE him. Big difference? Not really. The key point, however, is that in "Good Luck Chuck", he's a loser at love, but not necessarily a terrible person at heart.
But wait, I hear you say, he's only PRETENDING to be an asshole here, for a grander purpose, his actions allow these women to realize they had a pretty good relationship before, which they left because they assumed there MUST be a better relationship out there for them somewhere, but then they date Tank and think, "No, it's hell out there. My ex looks pretty good by comparison." Ah, so that's OK then, we're supposed to like this guy, he's only pretending to be a jerk. This might work, but then Tank says something about when he's not pretending to mistreat women, he attracts them in their spare time by making them feel terrible about themselves - so if they didn't have low self-esteem before, he gives it to them and then they're attracted to him, I guess because he projects that air of self-confidence? And this works, it gets him laid when he insults women and makes them feel terrible about themselves. So, therefore, Tank is just an asshole all the time, when he's being paid to drive women back to their boyfriends, and also when he's not, just for his own personal gain. OK, now I hate him again.
Does this work in real life? I would hate for this to work in real life. Umm, why does this happen in real life? Are some women attracted to the "bad boys"? Are some of them looking for people to "fix", as in "Oh, I'm going to change him, I'll grab him when he needs work and make him toe the line?" Not gonna happen. Or did these women get messed up by their fathers or exes and are just somehow nostalgic for the terrible way they were made to feel about themselves? I can't imagine any of this is healthy - but this film is set in Boston, and I can speak from personal experience, some people there are fairly messed up. This maybe explains a lot about this movie. Still, that's today's "Love Tip" - if you encounter an asshole, maybe DON'T date him. Seems like that should go without saying, right?
The movie's only 16 years old, but something tells me it just wouldn't work today - you couldn't release a film now where a guy gets ahead by mistreating women. We've had two or three female empowerment and awareness movements since then. I don't think Dane Cook got cancelled, but he hasn't been in a movie since 2019, and it feels like he belongs in that group with Louis CK and Joe Rogan, where half the audience just can't stand them. He probably makes more money from comedy tours, but he hasn't done one of those since 2019 either.
The film was directed by Howard Deutch, who also directed "Pretty in Pink" and "Some Kind of Wonderful", but now works primarily on TV shows. I honestly can't tell if this film was meant to be some kind of parody of romantic comedies, or a serious one that was designed to flip the genre around. Deutch is married to Lea Thompson, who directed "The Year of Spectacular Men", which I watched last week. Umm, advantage Howard Deutch, I guess?
The title is taken from the Cars song of the same name, which is played several times in the film. It's appropriate, I guess, because the band is from Boston and the film is set there. I have something of a history with the song, because back when I was in an a cappella group I would arrange songs for the group, and in one session where we were pitching song ideas, someone else suggested "Jessie's Girl" and I suggested "My Best Friend's Girl", and when we played one after the other I realized they were nearly the same song - you could sing one song while you played the other. So, I set about arranging them as one song, called "My Best Friend Jessie's Girl" - but I think the group broke up before we ever got around to singing that for an audience. I just did a Google search for song mash-ups, and surprisingly nobody but me ever put these two songs together, despite similar titles and subject matter.
Let's face it, a film like this was never going to be Shakespearean in nature, was never going to compete with "Twelfth Night" or "Much Ado About Nothing" (I've heard good things...). But it's probably good enough to just match everybody up with somebody at the end and roll the credits. I just can't spend much more time finding faults here, because I've still got three more weeks of romance-based films to go, I've got to pace myself. By March 12 I'll probably be all curled up in a fetal position, rocking back and forth, mumbling, "No more rom-coms, no more rom-coms..."
Also starring Dane Cook (last seen in "Good Luck Chuck"), Kate Hudson (last seen in "Glass Onion"), Jason Biggs (last seen in "Jay and Silent Bob Reboot"), Diora Baird (last seen in "Hot Tub Time Machine"), Lizzy Caplan (last seen in "Save the Date"), Riki Lindhome (last seen in "Knives Out"), Mini Anden (last seen in "Prime"), Hilary Pingle, Nate Torrence (last heard in "Zootopia"), Malcolm Barrett (last seen in "Swimfan"), Taran Killam (last seen in "Killing Gunther"), Faye Grant (last seen in "Internal Affairs"), Richard Snee (last seen in "Don't Look Up"), Amanda Brooks (last seen in "Flightplan"), Alberto Bonilla (last seen in "Cop Out"), Michael O'Toole (last seen in "Surrogates"), Sally Pressman, Kate Albrecht, Andrew Lewis Caldwell (last seen in "The Matrix Resurrections"), Tom Kemp (last seen in "The Purge: Election Year"), Tony V. (last seen in "World's Greatest Dad"), Andria Blackman (last seen in "Chappaquiddick"), Melina Lizette, Josh Alexander, Jenny Mollen (last seen in "Crazy, Stupid, Love"), Rob Rota, with a vocal cameo from Brad Garrett (last heard in "Tarzan 2: The Legend Begins") and archive footage of Demi Moore, Patrick Swayze.
RATING: 5 out of 10 crucifix-shaped pizzas (Is this really a thing? Should it be?)
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