**********************

Intolerable, vulgar, humourless comedy outing featuring Dane Cook, Jason Biggs, Alec Baldwin and Kate Hudson, lacks even a biting satirical edge or warm, fuzzy character with actual emotional weight to engage the audience. Instead, a diet of horrid jokes regarding various sexual deviancies tend to be the order of the day here, which, in small doses might have been permitted to liven up the film and juxtapose the sensitive, caring nature of our cast: we get them served up in almost mind-blowing proportions. What a truly awful film this is, a mediocre directing job from Howard Deutch and one of the stupidest things the normally luminous Kate Hudson has ever done. To say this film is simply a badly made comedy is to do disservice to really ordinary comedy, like Benny Hill or Parliamentary Question Time.

Dane Cook plays Tank, a shonky complaints line operator who flits about the background making idiot men look good. How does he do this? Well, when the girlfriend dumps you, you pay him to take them on a date, where he proceeds to behave like some caveman/drunken slob/sexual deviant in order to make said girl realise just how good they had it in the first place. Jason Biggs, who did a fairly similar role in American Pie, and, come to think of it, Loser, and come to think of it again, Saving Silverman… I think he’s been typecast… plays a wimpy loser who strikes out with his work colleague Alexis (Kate Hudson), and hires his cousin Tank (friend, whatever) to work his magic on her. From there, the usual mismatched-couple schlock plays out, with Tank and Alexis hooking up for real, even though he’s playing a sexist, misogynistic, vulgar bastard (as if!) and eventually Biggs’ character, Dustin, gets wise to the situation.

There is almost nothing reconcilable with this film as some kind of artwork. It lacks even the barest semblance of coherent characterisation (and whatever the hell Alec Baldwin thought about trashing his reputation on screen or on the phone to his daughter, he’s simply awful as the sexist father of Tank here!) or moral fibre. The film is an abhorrence, a diatribe against the very thing it purports to try and examine; that is, man’s sexualisation of women and his lust for them merely as objects, rather than people. Dane Cook roars through this film like John Belushi on speed. He’s a farting, belching swearing, sexually depraved maggot of a man, bereft of feelings and emotional depth: the opening scenes sets the rather strong tone for the film, and it’s so immediately off-putting (and even the twist joke ending of the scene is so moronic it merely carves the film a new backside and defecates in it) that the film is ruined henceforth. Cook, as Tank, is so unlikeable and perverted you cannot find an emotional hook with which to enjoy his character’s arc, the monstrosity of a man he is beggars excusability. Biggs, as sweet as he was in American Pie, is utterly out of his depth here. He’s simply lacklustre in a truly adult “comedy”, if I can use that phrase with a film so skewed towards blokey blokes it’s pathetic. Biggs whimpers and bemoans his fate through the film, he almost deserves the schalacking he gets along the way. And why in Gods Great Green Earth Kate Hudson decided to attach her name to this filth is beyond me. Surely the daughter of Goldie Hawn would have a little more class than this?

Where the film goes horribly wrong is it’s utter contempt for the female of our species. Instead of a morally off-kilter story dealing with a man’s inadequacies with women’s power, and his need to reduce himself to a masochistic emotional pinyata, we get a film so filled with gratuity and debauched humour there simply isn’t room inside it for “fun”. The situations are appallingly trashy, the characters are obtuse, poorly developed and mediocre (at best) and the dialogue is horrendously bad. I mean, take out some battery acid, stomp on my face and pour the acid into my wounds, bad. You couldn’t write rubbish like this in a diahorritic fit. Every second word is “f***”, every second shot is some hottie dressed provocatively winking slyly at Tank, and there’s enough entendre to relegate this film almost to the realms of second-rate British farce. It’s the kind of writing they serve up in Hell, I am sure of it. Not one skerrick of wit is anywhere to be seen in this mishmash of promiscuity, fellatio, vomit, emotional retardation, vulgarity and… well….. I’ve gone and run out of adjectives to describe just how stupidly stupid this film is.

I cannot recommend you avoid this film enough. Quite simply, alongside Carnosaur and Dune, this ranks as one of the single worst films I have ever seen. Anybody finding this even remotely funny needs to have their head examined for signs of psychosis. Honestly, I’m not going to give this film any more space on my website. I feel violated just for having watched it. Is it possible for a film to sexually assault a person? It feels like that’s what’s happened.

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Who wrote this?

Rodney Twelftree

“Some people say I like films. Those people are wrong. I *love* films.” – Me. I said this.

Rodney has been writing about films for well over two decades, appreciates a good wine, the love of his wife and kids, and the affection of his dog and cats. He has a fondness of cheesy 90’s action and classic Hollywood, hates that physical media is disappearing, and wishes somebody would make a high-budget series of The Neverending Story.

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