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My Best Friend’s Girl

Dane Cook, Kate Hudson, Jason Biggs

Former band mate (phone call): “Is Buddy Rich there?”

Buddy’s wife: “I’m sorry. Buddy is dead.”

Former band mate: “I know. I just like hearing that.”

Have you ever discovered a hot, young band, or singer? Bought their first CD, which was pretty good? You play each cut over and over again and then grew excited about the news that they were coming out with a new CD. You buy it and it is horrible. It lacks all the energy and ethos of the first effort. It is not until later that you realize that they had spent years, maybe a decade or more, in the boondocks and small dives perfecting the material that you loved, maybe stealing a lick here and there from others. Asked to come up with new music in a few months, they just do not have the talent to do it. By their third or fourth releases, you wonder why they are still around, especially if they are strutting around like they are rock-n-roll gods. Welcome to the wonderful world of Dane Cook, at minute number fourteen and fifty-eight seconds.

The energetic Dane Jeffrey Cook might be the hottest standup comedian among young lemmings, I mean teenagers, in this country [pub. Note: An adolescent Trevor Soderstrum, had NOTHING on any of today’s young readers, by the way!]. After seven years of playing small clubs, in 1997, Dane got his big break with a spot on the David Letterman Show and six years later he cobbled together enough material to put out his comedy CD “Harmful If Swallowed.” It went platinum. From there it was a rocket trip to the top. He became the hippest thing in comedy. His next effort, Retaliation, went double platinum and went all the way to #4 on the charts. He got an HBO reality series, Tourgasm, won the Teens Choice Award for best comedian and was named the Hot Comic of the Year by Rolling Stone. He has sold out Madison Square Garden four times in a row, something no comedian has ever done, and has well over two million friends on MySpace. Good looking, with a string of teenage zombies following his every move, it did not take long for Hollywood to take notice. After a series of minor roles in several flops, he got the chance to fall on his face all on his own in Employee of the Month, a movie in which he made co-star and sexy airhead, Jessica Simpson, seem like a future Oscar winner. Good Luck Chuck quickly followed and now it is My Best Friend’s Girl.

One little problem with his rise to the top, somewhere along the path to being a superstar he forgot to be funny. Fellow standups like Demetri Martin, Joe Rogan, Louis CK, David Cross, Robert Klein, and Jim Breuer openly call him a hack. A radio station in his hometown of Boston named him “the unfunniest comedian” currently performing. One newspaper has openly lamented that Cook is so awful that he might literally kill standup because of the rush of super fans who might try to mimic his style. It is the case with many who make it to the top that they start to drink their own bathwater, believe their own hype. Mr. Cook is no different. He is renown "for his huge ego and his diva-like demands" and is more overrated than Ryan Leaf drinking a New Coke while watching Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace on television. He is no Sam Kinison, Richard Lewis Bill Hicks, Robin Williams, Richard Pryor, or George Carlin. Even among the current generation of comedians, he is not even in the top fifty or one hundred for that matter. Standups like Louis CK, Don Stanhope, David Cross, Sarah Silverman, Patton Oswalt, Dave Attell, Bill Burr, Todd Barry, Jim Gaffigan, Dan Cummins, Stephen Lynch, Daniel Tosh, and Zach Galifinakis blow his doors off. There is no need to detail the numerous claims among fellow comedians that many of the best bits that made him famous were lifted from fellow comedians on the road. It is enough to note that his last two CDs were as funny as being on the receiving end of a lower GI performed by a epileptic, alcoholic doctor who has not had a drink in three days.

Now Dane Cook fans are probably giving me the “superfinger” (a Cook gag), saying that it is just my opinion, and they are right. It is just like my opinion that the Beatles are better than Pat Boone. In many ways, Dane Cook is the Pat Boone of comedy. He is safe, asking nothing from his teenage audience in the way of growth or challenging their worldview. While The Daily Show’s John Stewart, or a Sarah Silverman, might make a reference to something going on in society or politics, Cook avoids any attempt of cultural relevance. You cannot be too dumb to be in on a Dane Cook routine. He is one of your buddies sitting around the basement with you. While other social observers like Jerry Seinfeld come off as a bit smarter than you ever will be, Cook is a bud, a dude, one of the gang. He is cool, and mastering his catchphrases allows you to be cool too. It is frat boy humor for a George W. Bush generation.

It is also why Dane Cook is the perfect Tad Hunter romantic comedy leading man for the time. Joining him, in this by the numbers film, is Kate Hudson, who is a low rent, less pretty version of her mother Goldie Hawn. Much like her mother’s early career problems with being typecast, with her soft looks and bubbly presence, Kate cannot seem to escape the romantic comedy ghetto since her breakout role in Almost Famous. So, Ken and Barbie are in place, what is the movie about? In any romantic comedy, there is a very simple formula in place, because if two boring white people meet and fall in love in the first five minutes, well, you have a film about as long as the opening credits. There has to be some lie or game, the more ridiculous the better, that keeps the boy and girl apart until the film has reached the hour-and-a-half mark and the last product placement has been paraded out.

Jason Biggs, whose film roles since the American Pie franchise have been as successful as the servant in charge of making sure Britney Spears has her underwear on, is Dustin, a young man who has just broken up with Alexis (Hudson). Now in real life when a hot chick breaks up with you, you get drunk, call her a few four letter names, have those creepy moments where you call her and she pretends to not be home, and then you move on hopefully before the restraining order kicks in. But, this is Hollywood and there has to be some wacky scheme to win her back. Dustin’s wacky scheme? Hire Tank (Cook). Tank will take Alexis on such a bad date that Dustin looks like a million bucks in comparison and she will want to get back with him. Okay, this is a stretch, even for Plastic Man, but there needs to be a reason for Dane Cook to act all wacky and behave hilariously for the camera. Of course, things do not go as planned. Want to know the rest of the plot? Just rent Hudson’s How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Will Alexis and Tank get together? Will she go back to Dustin? How will Dustin react to Tank’s relationship with his former girlfriend? Why should I, like, care about two people named Alexis and Dustin? Those names sound like something a old, fat movie critic would call his two white, long-haired cats.

Dane Cook might have a successful future in movies. It certainly is not going to begin with this film. Anything is better than having to put up with one more standup routine. I might be giving the superfinger.

Verdict: Awful