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It's a cute premise, and the film is at its runaway best when Tank is being a grating jerk. It seems to come naturally to Cook, who makes endless lewd innuendos, ensures his dates contract food poisoning, and leaves the poor girls a weeping mess by the end of the night.
But My Best Friend's Girl had to go and throw in a plot around all of this, and that's where the movie becomes mostly unwatchable. This involves the loser best friend Dustin (Jason Biggs, now becoming hopelessly typecast as nothing but loser best friends), who finds his long-admired Alexis (a horrible Kate Hudson) wanting to 'see other people.' Somehow, Alexis has never met Tank, so Dustin sets the two up and soon they're off on a date from hell. The only problem: Alexis doesn't seem to mind the loud music, the rude behavior, and dinner at a strip club, and soon they're in the sack, as Tank's plan has totally backfired.
You can guess the rest: Tank actually falls for Alexis, he has to hide the relationship from Dustin, and ultimately has to decide whether or not to step aside for his best pal to get back in the game. It all culminates in a film-saving wedding (with Alexis's sister getting hitched), where Tank pulls out all the stops in his game.
Aside from catastrophic acting from Hudson, the problem is that none of this really makes any sense at all. No real woman would fall for Tank after his 'worst behavior' display, Tank's penultimate change of heart makes no sense at all. And the ending is absolutely baffling, the kind of sequence that makes you wonder if a test audience totally hated the original ending and this one got shot in a hurry instead. (And by the way, don't let Alec Baldwin's picture on the DVD cover mislead you -- he's got about as much screen time here as in Glengarry Glen Ross.)
The $40 million film was a bomb, pulling in $19 million theatrically. It probably would have fared better were it not awfully similar in feel to Good Luck Chuck, which also starred Cook and came out a year earlier. Then again, that movie only earned $35 million... so someone really should have known better.
The DVD includes two commentary tracks, deleted scenes, and four making-of featurettes.
Oops, my headband fell down.
