MY BEST FRIEND'S GIRL - not to my taste, but I can imagine Dane Cook fans having a great time

From, improbably, the director of PRETTY IN PINK, comes a gross-out romantic comedy. Jason Biggs (AMERICAN PIE) is typecast as the desperate loser whose girlfriend (Kate Hudson) dumps him. In a characteristically contrived set-up, he hires his best-friend - a sort of anti-HITCH - who takes girls on piss-poor dates so that they realise how nice they guys they just dumped were and ask to get back with them. Problem is, the anti-Hitch and the girl actually hit it off. What follows is a bi-polar movie. The first two-thirds are firmly in gross-out territory with lots of non-politically correct dating humour. In the final third, the movie loses its balls and flips into a typically schmaltzy rom-com. I don't particularly find Dane Cook's brand of whacky humour funny, and I certainly don't dig formulaic rom-com's so I pretty much hated this film. BUT I can perfectly envisage fans of Dane Cook really having a great time with this film. So it's basically an alpha-gamma review. This movie does what it does. It's not to all tastes, so think carefully before you go, and hopefully you'll have a good time either way!

MY BEST FRIEND'S GIRL is on release in Greece, Hungary, Russia, Thailand, the US, the Philippines, Israel, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Belgium, Brazil, Iceland, Turkey, Spain, New Zealand, South Korea, Estonia, Finland, Poland and the UK. It opens in Portugal on November 27th and in Sweden on December 5th.

Random DVD round up 1: MR BROOKS

Mr Brooks (Kevin Costner) is a well-respected successful businessman, with a beautiful wife, a beautiful house and a beautiful car. He also gets off on killing people - a genetic trait he has apparently passed on to his beautiful daughter. The resulting movie plays less as a scary psycho-thriller than sympathy for a serial killer. After all, if adulterers can be re-cast as sex addicts, Mr Brooks isn't a criminal so much as a victim of his uncontrollable urges. Shorn of its pyschological edge, MR BROOKS descends into a satistifying if unmemorable CSI style police procedural. Demi Moore is fine in the smart cop role and William Hurt's role as Mr Brooks' personal devil offsets the inherent incredibility of Dane Cook's performance as a fetishistic photographer.

MR BROOKS has already been released in Argentina, Turkey, the US, Bulgaria, Russia, France, Poland, Sweden, Israel, Greece, Norway, Denmark, Indonesia, Australia, Mexico, Kuwait, Chile, France, South Korea, Panama, the Netherlands, Brazil, Finland, Iceland, Hungary, Slovenia and Italy. It is now showing in the UK and opens in Belgium on October 17th, Germany on November 29th and Spain on December 5th.

Dullard DVD of the month - GOOD LUCK CHUCK

GOOD LUCK CHUCK is a piss-poor romantic comedy starring alleged stand up comedian Dane Cook and the not unattractive Jessica Alba. The set-up is ridiculous. Dane Cook plays a man who has been cursed. If a woman sleeps with him, she is bound to marry the next guy she dates. Apparently, this leads lots of credulous women to offer themselves to him, just so they can end up married - an absurd, and borderline misogynistic premise. Cook's character then meets a pretty girl played by Jessica Alba and has to work out how to date her, but stop marrying the next guy she meets.

Director Mark Helfrich eschews verbal witticisms in favour of physical humour. Now I have nothing against slapstick but this stuff is obvious and neither Cook nor Alba have the talent to pull it off. Neither do they have the chemistry to pull of a rom-com. As for Cook's comedy side-kick, Dan Fogler, that actor is rapidly becoming the Rob Schneider of his generation. Definitely one to avoid.

GOOD LUCK CHUCK was released in Autumn 2007 and is now available on DVD.

DAN IN REAL LIFE - Two words: Pig Face

Peter Hedges is a screenwriter who has an uncanny ability to write about real life and real relationships in a way that you can relate to, that touches you, but isn't mawkish. After brilliant adaptations of WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE? and ABOUT A BOY, and a really great indie drama called PIECES OF APRIL, he returns to the screen as writer-director of DAN IN REAL LIFE.

This new movie is a far more conventional, mainstream effort than his previous work. The story is familiar to rom-com fans, not least to those of us who sat through the vastly inferior THE FAMILY STONE. Basically a man falls in love at first sight with the one woman he can't have - his brother's new girlfriend. Watch them squirm through the family weekend! Watch true love win despite the initial anger of the betrayed! In this case we have Steve Carrell playing an earnest, heart-broken widower and father of three called Dan Burns. He's basically just a warm, funny, messed up guy - who wouldn't fall in love with him?! And so he meets-cute with a woman called Marie, played by Juliette Binoche. Marie is basically apparently a 100% Peaches and Cream wonderful women. Problem is, she's dating the younger brother, Mitch, played by Dane Cook.

The script has a few problems. I don't understand why these two seemngly perfect people would be alone in the first place. I also don't really buy into how quickly Dan's parents, kids and brother forgive him in the end. And as for the production, I thought Juliette Binoche was mis-cast. It's not so much that she can't play comedy but that she, Carrell and Cook make such odd pairings. There's simply no chemistry.

Set against all of this, DAN IN REAL LIFE is refreshingly real, occasionally very funny, and features a wonderful cameo from Emily Blunt. Most of all, Steve Carrell really has the sympathetic loser character down pat. He's totally infringing on Greg Kinnear's territory, but he's so winning you just have to forgive him! So, on balance, I guess I'd have to recommend DAN IN REAL LIFE. It's not as good as ABOUT A BOY but if I stumbled upon it on TV I'd find it hard to switch channels.

DAN IN REAL LIFE opened in the US, Iceland, Russia, Greece, Israel, Russia Greece, Israel and Slovenia in 2007. It is currently playing in Singapore and the UK. It opens in Australia next weel and in Norweay amd Spain in February. It opens in Sweden, Belgium, France, Germany and Italy in March and in the Netherlands in April 2008.

EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH is a movie crying out for Ryan Reynolds

EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH is a bland, anonymous alleged comedy. About the best thing I can say about it is that, unlike the actually offensive DUKES OF HAZZARD, EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH makes comparatively little use of the "talent" that is Jessica Simpson. Indeed, she is little more than a MacGuffin: the leggy blonde prize that the two equally feckless supermarket employees are trying to impress by winning the much-coveted (I kid you not) Employee of the Month prize. Both employees are played by comedians that are apparently well-known in the US. I'd never heard of them and given their performances in this film, I'm not hugely incentivised to find out more. If ever a film were crying out for Ryan Reynolds to take up his stereo-typed role of wise-ass slacker, then this is it. In fairness, though, it's hard to imagine that Reynolds would be able to do any better with such a formulaic and under-written script. Don't be fooled by PR hype that this flick is a satire on Amercian consumerism. I've seen wittier one-liners on the back of the lavatory door in the Curzon Soho.

EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH opened in the US in October, in Thailand in November, and is currently playing in Iceland and the UK. It opens in Belgium on March 7th and in the Netherlands on March 22nd. It's released on Region 1 DVD in two weeks time.

WAITING - More painful than picturing John Prescott shag his secretary

It's hard to say *definitively* if WAITING is the worst film of 2006. Not because I am afraid of pronouncing on such subjective matters as though I were the oracle of cinematic Objectivity. Rather, because I have not yet seen CASINO ROYALE. What I can say is that despite featuring all the hallmarks of a Binatastic Low Rent night out, WAITING sucked ass. I set the bar pretty low when it comes to gross-out humour. I'll take Ryan Reynolds injecting a chocolate eclair with dog sperm and laugh my ass off. But this movie is just terrible. The basic premise is that a bunch of losers work in a crappy restaurent. To add purpose to their meaningless lives they adulterate the food. That's it! There is no humour, be it verbal witticism or just a chick slipping on some spilled pudding. I just give up. I cannot articulate how devoid of any entertainment value this movie is. And no, it is not so bad it is good. And it's not so "straight to video" that it will earn a cult following. So do yourself a favour, and Just Say No.

WAITING was released in the US last October and Australia last December. It opened in the UK yesterday and, I would imagine, will go "straight to video" everywhere else.