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Good Luck Chuck (2007) is a romantic comedy about how a man tries to break and overcome a childhood voodoo curse to win over the girl of his dreams and finally find true love. Sounds corny? You bet it is, but this is a romantic comedy and nonsensical plots have more often than not reared its ugly head in this genre of movies. However, this movie is not without its merits and it is still a decent film to catch.

The film starts off with 10-year old Charlie Logan playing a game of ’spin the bottle’ with his group of friends. He then refuses to kiss and make out with a crazed goth-girl as per the game rules dictate, and the girl casts some sort of hex on him out of spite. 25 years later, Charlie has established himself as a successful dental surgeon. He has plenty of luck with women looking for fun; however he has no luck with finding the true love that he so fervently seeks. Eventually it dawned upon him that he was still under a curse - whichever woman that sleeps with him, will find true happiness and marital bliss with the next partner. Goaded on by his obnoxious childhood friend Stu Kaminsky, he goes on a sex romp (supposedly doing community a service), sleeping with hordes of eager women who want to eventually find true love, albeit by having sex with Charlie first.

Charlie’s promiscuous perspective of life makes a drastic change when he meets Cam (played by the lovely Jessica Alba), a clumsy and accident-prone zookeeper with an obsession with penguins. In order not to lose her to her next partner, Charlie has to remain celibate, which obviously is a challenging feat for Charlie (especially when it’s Jessica Alba!). After Charlie mistakenly assumes that the hex is broken, he finally lets loose and enjoys a night of passion with Cam. To his horror, as a result of Stu’s deceit, the hex was not broken and he risked losing Cam to the next man she meets. Charlie then races against time to break the curse and eventually Cam, touched by his sincerity, accepts him and they got married in Antarctica (or North Pole, or wherever penguins populate).

This movie drew tremendous amounts of flak when it aired in USA, and it was easy to comprehend why. The humour was slapstick and at numerous points you would find yourself rolling your eyes to the jokes rather than laughing like you’re supposed to. This movie is full of sexual content, basically an entire parade of topless females. The difference between Good Luck Chuck and the popular American Pie series is that the former tries too hard to display more depth and plot to shrug off the stereotype of a brainless sex-laden flick. At this, Good Luck Chuck is an unmitigated disaster. In contrast, American Pie does not seek to distinguish itself and actually excels at being a value-less, watch-and-laugh-and-forget sex comedy, which is why it is rather well-accepted. Jessica Alba’s character Cam was an outdated movie cliché the bungling and clumsy female lead character was funny five years ago.

As I mentioned in my opening paragraph, this movie is not without several redeeming factors. Dane Cook and Jessica Alba put in some decent acting as the lead characters and I felt that the plot did not do any justice to their efforts. Dane Cook, in particular, did a good job as the charismatic Dr Logan. This was the main saving grace as to why I rated this movie 3 and not anything lower. Other than this, there were actually some sincere bits towards the ending of the movie, when Cam gets so suffocated by Charlie’s protectiveness that she tries to break away.

Watch Good Luck Chuck (2007) if you do not have anything else better to watch in the romantic comedy department, but stock up on popcorn. You will at least have something to do when the perpetual bad humour fails to crack you up. Oh, and nobody ever calls him Chuck anyways.

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