This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
The Warm-Up Guy Meets Penguin Girl
Plot Overview
1985. During a spin-the-bottle game, young
Stu (Troy Gentile) explains the facts of life to his wingman
Chuck (Conner Price):
Young Charlie: “Stu, run it by me again? Kissing is first base. Second base is boob. Third base is—”
Young Stu: “Finger.”
Young Charlie: “Finger?”
Young Stu: “Or thumb.”
Young Charlie: “What's a blowjob?”
Young Stu: “I have no idea. But I overheard my dad saying that he gets one once a year on his birthday, so it must be good.”
Stu adds that a kiss on the cheek is an intentional walk, but “Second base is what it's all about. I'm all about boobies.”
Charlie (10) and his secret admirer Goth Girl Anisha (11) repair to the closet where she steals first and attempts to “do the nasty” with him, but Charlie rebuffs her bringing on himself a curse:
I hex you. You will never be happy! Around you love will fall like rain. You won't hold it. Your heart will pain! Once the girl has been with you, to the next she will be true!
Present Day, circa 2007. Stuart Klaminsky
(Dan Fogler) and Charlie Logan (Dane Cook) work “tits and
teeth,” the former as a plastic surgeon specializing in breast
reconstruction and the latter a dentist. Stu is such a
“doofus” he can't get anywhere with women (apart
from admiring his work,) and Charlie won't “take advantage”
of them. Since he won't get them drunk or profess that he loves them,
he's holding at first base. At his ex-girlfriend Katie (Chiara
Zanni)'s wedding she toasts him as her “lucky charm” because
she met her new husband right after they broke up. Chuck hits on bumbling
Cam Wexler (Jessica Alba) there but she eschews him for his playboy
reputation. Her doper brother Joe (Lonny Ross) has labeled her
“Murphy” for the way things always fall apart around her.
Murphy's Law—If anything can go wrong it will—derives from the way we remember stuff that goes awry and attach significance to it, while we scarcely recall all the things that went right. The hex on Chuck, that he's a lucky charm bringing immediate love to all his exes, also has a basis in real life. Writer Paul Landis writes In Defense of Dating:
It is quite logical to believe that some kind of dating is necessary to the development of the judgment and pair interaction that is at the root of real objectivity in mate selection. Those who have dated more than one person have a chance to compare and to learn some of the usual behavior patterns of members of the opposite sex. They learn to distinguish between those whose personalities seem to promise a durable compatibility and those whose personalities obviously do not. Dating is an exploratory experience through which young people learn. In most circles today, therefore, it is considered desirable that young people “circulate” rather than “go steady” from the beginning, that some variety of dating experience is favorable to ultimate mate choice. The girl who is considered desirable as a date by a number of fellows is presumed to be the one most likely to be sought after in marriage. (223)
Charlie being a tall, handsome, successful dentist—just shy of a doctor in status—gets dates with lots of women to whom he will not commit. Therefore he is part of the mix for ultimate fulfillment when the right one for them comes along.
When Charlie's misconstrued status
as a lucky charm goes viral, he gets hordes of beautiful women beating
down his door, but he refuses to take advantage until Stu persuades
him to follow the example of Martin Luther King (MLK) who was given a pass on account of
his message. His philandering was well known at the
time. Kinky Friedman writes,
Martin Luther King was given to fooling around a bit, apparently, in his extramarital area. So the [FBI] pursued him relentlessly and got his whole life on tape. They'd bug his hotel rooms when he was on the road and come up with some gem like: “Oh, Martin, your dick is so big!” Then they'd call his wife and play the tape into the phone. (205)Carmen Renee Berry & Tamara Traeder offer this advice to their fair readers:
In addition to the more conservative and usually religious voices calling for sex only within marriage, a surprising number of secular voices are admonishing women to remember the adage, “Why buy the cow if the milk is free?” Pat Allen in her book Staying Married … and Loving It, writes, “Most modern, liberated, sexually active women believe they can maintain control over their emotions after making love. What they don't realize is that when a woman gives her body to a man, there's a strong chance that she's going to bond to him—even after only one good sexual encounter.” (Berry 82)
What we have now in this movie is a lot of women who've given away the milk (“Do you know how many loser boyfriends I have had?”) and been left high and dry (“Do you know how many times I have given myself, body, mind, soul, hoping this was it, this was the one, only to find out he was just another asshole?”) So they desperately follow an urban legend to get a lucky charm with which to broker the cow. Following the example of MLK Chuck is seen in a pastiche of frames humping a surfeit of broads in a Zodiac of positions, much like the FBI had a telling stash of sex tapes on a public figure with an exonerating [?] message. When things get so mixed up that Chuck must chase a plane to win his lost love, we see the white dentist bump a Negro businessman out of his place in line, negating the historical message for a personal one. There's also a deleted scene that shows Stu touting his large-sized penis in his pickup lines, an approach that worked better with show than with tell.
Ideology
The Proverbs explored human interactions but they were stumped by men & women. Used as a buildup to their unpredictability were other observable movements, on land, sea, and air, that were difficult to track. (Prov. 30:18-19) “There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.” The eagle drifts majestically on the wind until it swoops down on a prey unseen by us. A serpent slithers on a rock we know not how. A ship is tossed by a confluence of hidden forces. And men & women seem to combine all these unpredictables.
In “GL Chuck” there's an airport scene where he must dash to catch a plane his love is on, but there are two flights she could take, both about to depart, and he doesn't know which. How does he choose?
There's the opening spin-the-bottle scene where we see the spinning bottle first from above and then looking out from it. We know where Chuck wants it to land, but will it end up there? Impossible to say while it's in motion.
Cam has perfect teeth and no reason to call Charlie's number on his card, not until, “I slipped while having a fish fight, slid down an ice ramp, got tackled by a penguin, and fell face-first into a fake ice boulder.” Her little water escapade resulted in a chipped tooth, a dental emergency, and she had only one dentist's number to call. Who could have predicted it?
As for their personal relations, we're kept guessing big time.
Production Values
“” (2007) was directed by Mark Helfrich. Its screenplay was written by Josh Stolberg from a short story by Steve Glenn. It stars Dane Cook, Jessica Alba and Dan Fogler. Alba expressly displayed her perfect teeth to the camera and wasn't bashful about the rest of her either. As they say, If you got it, flaunt it. Cook was a working stand-up comedian whose edgy presence is enough to make one laugh before he even opens his mouth. Put them together and you've got, well, a movie.
MPAA rated it R for sequences of strong sexual content including crude dialogue, nudity, language and some drug use. There's also an unrated version available that includes additional scenes of a hypocritical Christian, topless walk-ons, and a tranny. Its runtime of 1 hour 36 minutes ends it while it still has shock value.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
The humor is lowbrow all the way. If you can laugh at that kind of material, you'll enjoy this one, although you might not want to let your highbrow friends find it in your movie collection. See it before you grow up.
Movie Ratings
Action Factor: Weak action scenes. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Well, at least you can't see the strings. Video Occasion: Crude Date Movie. Suspense: A few suspenseful moments. Overall movie rating: Three stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture quotation from the Authorized King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software, print.
Allen, Dr. Patricia and Sandra Harmon, Staying Married … and Loving It. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1997. As quoted.
Berry, Carmen Renee and Tamara Traeder. Girlfriends Talk About Men. Berkeley: Wildcat Canyon Press, 1997. Print.
Friedman, Kinky. The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. Print.
Landis, Paul H. Making the Most of Marriage. New York: Meredith Publishing, 1965. Print.
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