• Tweet

Two out of Five stars
Running time: 102 mins

Tedious, largely unfunny and poorly written comedy with the least likeable collection of characters you'll see all year.

What's it all about?
Dane Cook plays Sherman 'Tank' Turner, a self-styled professional asshole who specialises in providing a date experience so horrible that the victim runs screaming back into the arms of their recently-dumped ex-boyfriend. However, when his roommate-slash-best friend Dusty (Jason Biggs) asks him to work his dark magic on his dreamgirl-slash-co-worker Alexis (Kate Hudson), Tank is shocked to find himself falling for his latest victim instead.

The Bad
The problem with My Best Friend's Girl is that none of it works: there's no chemistry between Cook and Hudson, the jokes aren't funny and none of the characters are remotely likeable. Cook has made a career out of playing supposedly likeable assholes (see also - or rather, don't - the thematically similar Good Luck Chuck), but Tank is so awful that you can't tell when he's being paid to be an asshole from when he's just being himself.

Don't let the presence of Kate Hudson fool you – this is definitely a Dane Cook vehicle rather than a How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days-style romcom. The strange thing is that none of the characters talk about anything other than sex or dating – this includes both Alexis' roommate Ami (Lizzy Caplan) and Tank's permanently priapic professor father (Alec Baldwin).

The Worst
The film does have the occasional glimmer of humour, such as a blasphemous pizza parlour called Cheesus Crust or lines like "She's going to lose her shit like a shit-collector with amnesia", but for the most part the comedy falls horribly flat. Even reliable comic performers like Biggs and Baldwin struggle to make their scenes work.

Ultimately, the film is badly written and poorly thought-out, to the point where the climax is utterly unconvincing. It's also at least 15 minutes too long and drags horribly towards the end.

Worth seeing?
In a word, no. My Best Friend's Girl is watchable enough but if you end up paying to see it you'll hate yourself afterwards.