In My Best Friend's Girl, Dane Cook plays a guy named Tank Turner. Not only does he have a name only a screenwriter could dream up, but he also has a job only a screenwriter could dream up. I'm not talking about his day job, where he half-asses his way through a customer complaint phone line, ignoring customers while he plays Nintendo in his cubicle. I'm talking about his other job, which he describes in his own words as a "professional asshole". He also calls himself an "emotional terrorist".

So, just what does a "professional asshole" do? Tank is paid by people to act like the worst guy in the world. The idea is guys who have just been dumped by their girlfriends but want them back pay Tank to take the girl out on a date. The idea is that Tank acts like such a rude, crude, and selfish jerk that by the time the date's over, the girl is pleading to go back to her last boyfriend. We see a couple of his "dates" with various women, like the one where he disgusts a girl with his graphic stories of sexual acts, or the one where he takes a religious girl to a sacrilegious pizza parlor called "Cheesus Crust". (ho, ho) Tank does a pretty good job at offending the ladies, and probably owes a lot to his womanizing father (Alec Baldwin). But then the movie dares to ask the question of what would happen if Tank actually did fall in love? It's a good question, but there's a big problem. The movie forgets we're supposed to like Tank if he's going to be a romantic lead, and we don't.

As the title suggests, Tank's best friend and roommate Dustin (Jason Biggs, who eerily looks exactly the same way he did almost 10 years ago in the original American Pie.) has just been brushed off by a female co-worker named Alexis (Kate Hudson). Dustin has been crazy about her since he met her, and when he finally works up the courage to tell her how he feels, she says she just wants to be friends. His idea? He hires Tank to meet her, and take her on the "date from hell", thereby guaranteeing that she'll come flying into Dustin's arms when it's over. Tank stages a "meet cute" with Alexis in the park, and then takes her out to a strip joint, hoping to offend her. The problem? Alexis is too drunk to care where she is that night, and is actually looking for the quick and dirty love that Tank can provide, and "nice guy" Dustin cannot. Tank and Alexis start seeing each other regularly, while Dustin (unaware of their relationship) turns into a creepy stalker as he tries to discover who Alexis is dating.

Does anyone I've just described sound like someone you'd want to watch in a romantic comedy, or even be sitting next to on a long bus ride? If My Best Friend's Girl had maybe been a dark comedy, or maybe a parody of romantic comedy conventions, then yes maybe it would work. But after spending 45 minutes or so of developing Tank as the kind of guy who takes his date to strip joints, the movie suddenly switches gears, and expects us to realize that underneath all the filth and sexist behavior, he's not that bad of a guy. If there was any lead in to this change of heart, then I might have been able to buy it. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The movie suddenly turns into a by-the-book date comedy. Just like Ashton Kutcher in What Happens in Vegas, Dane Cook is not a romantic lead. He's the slob. He's the jerk. He's the goofy best friend. When the movie asks him to clean up his act, not only does it seem to go against the character's nature, Cook himself doesn't seem comfortable.

Of course, if the movie wanted to be taken seriously as a romance, it would have helped if the two leads had anything resembling chemistry. Dane Cook and Kate Hudson don't share a single moment in the film that creates any true spark, or even any feelings that the two want to be in the same room together. This is a movie that wants to have it both ways. It wants to be raunchy and crude, but it also wants to be sympathetic and sweet. It fails on both counts. The crude humor is never funny, nor does it push hard enough to want to be truly offensive. And when the movie switches tone, it can't think of a reason for us to care. I have no doubt that the two halves of the movie could work together in a different and smarter script. But director Howard Deutch (The Whole Ten Yards) never finds a way for everything to fit. All we have is one big movie that feels very uncertain about itself or what, if anything, it has to say.

Last year around this time, Dane Cook did a raunchy romantic comedy called Good Luck Chuck. I think I hated that movie more than I hated My Best Friend's Girl, but at least that movie had the balls to stick to one plan all the way through. It knew what it wanted to be. When this movie reached its happy ending, and extras in the background started applauding the lead characters, I wondered why they were cheering. The people in this story don't deserve the happy ending they get, nor do they deserve this formulaic treatment. If they were in a different movie that suited them better, I probably still would have hated them, but at least the movie wouldn't be trying to shoehorn them into roles that don't fit them.

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