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• My Best Friend's Girl
• Directed by Howard Deutch
• Written by Jordan Cahan
• Starring Dane Cook, Kate Hudson, Jason Biggs and Alec Baldwin
• Classification: 18A
• Rating:

There have been insult comedians before: Denis Leary, Sam Kinison, Don Rickles. None looked good with his shirt off. Especially Kinison. So none had much of a shot at a romantic comedy career. Dane Cook, however, looks great topless, even while shoving a girl out of bed for overstaying her welcome.

The stubbled, chain-smoking comedian has emerged as a new romcom type: the sexy jerk that women, if they're lucky, grow out of.

That's not so much a character description as a plot summary of Good Luck Chuck, Cook's 2007 hit, and his latest, My Best Friend's Girl. Last time out he was the guy women slept with before settling down to marriage. Here, his character, Tank, is a gigolo paid for by other guys to make them look good.

Tank's M.O. is to take a girl out for a (Dutch) date at a strip club, propositioning her before hitting the john after his second beer. She runs back to her old boyfriend, Tank's employer. He returns to his apartment to take his shirt off and paw at his cobblestone stomach, complaining about love and life to best friend-roommate, Dustin (Jason Biggs).

Dustin has women problems of his own. A great girl at work (Kate Hudson) likes him as a friend, but not a boyfriend. Dustin wonders if Tank might help him. Take Alexis out, show her a bad time.

As you have probably already guessed, Cupid shoots himself in the foot. After the strip club, way too many drinks and a lot of arguing, Tank and Alexis begin wrestling outside her apartment. One insult – “You think that's too big!” – leads to another “You think that's too small!” Before long, Alexis is pawing at Tank's cobblestone tummy.

Someone once said that all love stories are chemistry lessons. If so, then both Cook and Hudson flunk this, their final exam. She hurries through their bits together, looking exasperated, like she can't find her car keys. He plays all their early scenes over-the-top and seems nervous with just one other person in a room. Cook, the actor, suffers from every stand-up comedian's fatal insecurity: He needs a crowd, not another character to be interested in him.

Like too many films tailored for a comedian, My Best Friend's Girl is a series of routines more than a movie. At one point, Tank meets a religious girl who he takes to a Christian restaurant – Jesus Crust Pizza. The waiters are dressed like apostles. The scene has nothing to do with reality, Alexis, Dustin or anything else in the movie. It's just a three-minute gag the filmmakers hope we will like.

Only one of the film's diversions really works. Alec Baldwin is fast and funny in a five-minute cameo as Tank's father, a professional cad who has gone happily mad teaching women's studies at college.

Otherwise My Best Friend's Girl is an ugly, strictly-for-meatheads comedy that can only be recommended to couples who wear matching Tie Domi Toronto Maple Leafs jerseys out on a date.

Special to The Globe and Mail