Good Luck Chuck is another in a line of high concept, gross out, rom-coms, similar to 'Shallow Hal' and '40 Days and 40 Nights'. There is usually a weird disparity in these films between the crudeness of the humour and the sentimentality of the romance. I'm not sure if this is to appeal to both sexes or because these kinds of films traditonally must end up with happy ending, but it is a weird trend I've noticed.

Chuck Logan is cursed by a childhood girlfriend to never be happy and one step further, that every woman he ever sleeps with will find the perfect man after him. (A rather specific curse, that happens to lend itself to a comedy movie). This 'curse' makes him very desirable to women who are looking for true love, but when Chuck meets the woman of his dreams, he realises that he wants to be the perfect man for her.

The last film I saw Dane Cook in was, 'My Best Friend's Girl', in which his character was much ruder and cruder compared to Chuck in this film. They seem to play Chuck as a romantic who is forced into becoming this walking 'Good Luck F*ck' (I'm guessing the title is a reference to this) and his friend, Stu, is the bad-taste, morally void character who would love to take advantage of the women throwing themselves at Chuck. It doesn't feel like Chuck learns anything in the film because he is a victim of a curse that he didn't particularly deserve. It would have made a more satisfying arc had he revelled in his abilities and learned the errors of his ways.

Jessica Alba, plays Chuck's love interest, Cam, and she is played as an accident-prone, penguin lover and it seems like the only reason she's accident-prone is to provide some slap-stick moments. Beyond her slapsticky character, she is a bit hard to read, as she seems reluctant to date Chuck because of his reputation, then after a few dates, she seems to be the more sexual dominant of the two.

Overall, this is a good film, although it does pale in comparsion to some of the others in its genre. There seems to be an internal struggle within the film whether to embrace the sleaziness of the main premise, or to play it straight as a traditonal rom-com, which does lead to a mixed result. The gross-out gags aren't particularly memorable, or imitations of other films, for example, having sex with a Grapefruit isn't that far removed to having sex with an American Pie. The film manages to entertain, but is unlikely to be remembered as a classic of the genre. Think more Along Came Polly than There's Something About Mary.