'My Best Friend's Girl' review

(Credit: Lionsgate)

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Tank (Dane Cook) is so good at being a jackass that when guys get dumped they pay him to take their exes out on dates terrible enough to make the girls go running back to their former boyfriends. Tank reluctantly agrees to work his “magic” on Alexis (Kate Hudson), the dream girl of his best friend Dustin (Jason Biggs), but the plan backfires when Alexis decides she’s up for a meaningless fling with a nasty boy. And Tank starts to realize why Dustin finds her so appealing.

Big question: Will the ongoing threat to humanity that is Cook’s movie career ever end?

Skip it: Whoever thought it was a good idea to match an actor as unappealing as Cook with a character that does nothing but make you squirm for 100 minutes was wrong. And why in the name of Mira Sorvino is one-time Oscar nominee Hudson wasting her naturally sunny charm on trash like this? A smarter film might have been able to convincingly peel back the layers of Tank’s self-loathing to make the audience believe he deserves a shot with Alexis. But not this one. It’s a nauseating fraud from start to finish.

Catch it: To see why Alec Baldwin should never, ever leave “30 Rock” or else risk winding up in more insulting “in it for the paycheck” roles like the one he has here as Tank’s lecherous college professor father.

Bottom line: From tacky direction to cardboard characters to “jokes” that confuse cruelty with edgy comedy, the film’s level of awfulness is nothing new for Cook, but Hudson hits a new low. She’s been in plenty of crap before, just never anything this outright vile. The entire uninspired project has the noxious vibes of a star vehicle for a career that’s already stalled, supported by actors on the wrong side of Hollywood’s “It” list. That’s more than unfunny, it’s depressing.

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