Good Luck Chuck

Good Luck Chuck is a 2007 American romantic comedy film starring Dane Cook and Jessica Alba. In the film, women find their "one true love" after having sex with a dentist named Chuck (Cook). Chuck meets a girl named Cam (Alba) and tries to become her true love. The film opened in theaters on September 21, 2007, and was panned by critics. One of Good Luck Chuck's theatrical posters parodied the well-known Rolling Stone cover photographed by Annie Leibovitz featuring John Lennon and Yoko Ono in similar poses.

For the sitcom originally broadcast on the Disney Channel from 2010 to 2014, see Good Luck Charlie.
Good Luck Chuck
Theatrical release poster
Directed byMark Helfrich
Produced byMike Karz
Written byJosh Stolberg
Starring
Music byAaron Zigman
CinematographyAnthony B. Richmond
Edited byJulia Wong
Production
company
Karz Entertainment
Distributed byLionsgate
Release date
  • September 21, 2007 (2007-09-21)
Running time
99 minutes
101 minutes (unrated cut)
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$25 million[1]
Box office$59.2 million[2]

Plot

While playing seven minutes in heaven at a party in 1985, 10-year-old Charlie "Chuck" Logan (Connor Price) refuses to kiss a goth girl named Anisha (Sasha Pieterse) who attempts to have sex with him. In retaliation, Anisha places a curse on Chuck, so that every single woman he sleeps with will break up with him and marry the next man who asks her out.

In the present, Chuck (Dane Cook) is a successful dentist in his thirties, and runs a dental practice in the same building as his best friend Stu's (Dan Fogler) plastic surgery business. Chuck finds himself unable to tell his girlfriend, Carol (Chelan Simmons), that he loves her, and she breaks up with him while having sex on the beach. Following the break up, Stu and Chuck decide to attend the wedding of one of Chuck's ex-girlfriends, Katie. At Katie's wedding, Chuck becomes enamored with Cam Wexler (Jessica Alba), a clumsy, yet attractive and friendly marine biologist. Their chemistry is apparent the moment they start talking. The wedding eventually ends, and they seemingly go their separate ways. While working at a penguin habitat, Cam accidentally slips and chips her tooth. When she visits Chuck to have it fixed, he asks her to go out with him instead of paying him. Though initially reluctant, Cam agrees. Meanwhile, Stu notices the pattern of girls getting married as soon as Chuck has sex with them. Stu eventually convinces Chuck to embrace the influx of women who have learned of his pattern and visit his practice, arguing that there's nothing better than having lots of guilt-free sex. However, after having this so-called "guilt-free sex" with numerous women, Chuck decides he wants a serious relationship with Cam. However, just before he has sex with her, Stu informs him that each of the women Chuck has slept with have got married, including Carol. Worried that the same thing will happen to Cam, Chuck begins to avoid her.

Stu convinces Chuck to test the curse by having sex with an obese woman, and see if she marries afterward. Chuck asks Stu to ask the woman out to see if this results in marriage, and when it does not, Chuck concludes that the curse is fake, and has sex with Cam. Afterward, however, Chuck discovers that the woman Stu was supposed to ask out married another man. Chuck calls Stu, who confesses that he only pretended to ask the woman. Chuck gets mad because of Stu's betrayal but Stu's actions came from a good place. Chuck is worried that Cam will now find her true love and begins to smother her in numerous ways: literally making so much food that she can't get out of bed, calling her constantly, filling her office with flowers and balloons, showing up in a box delivered by a barbershop quartet and more. Cam breaks up with him after finding him in her car after work. Chuck then begins to think of crazy ideas to get Cam back, ending up with him ambushing her at her job to propose. However, he sees her hugging someone else and makes a huge scene only to find out the man was her hair dresser. Cam is over the crazy behavior and breaks up with him. After seeing a spinning bottle, Chuck remembers Anisha and tracks her down. After the break-up, Chuck attempts to track down Anisha in order to break the curse. Now married with a child, Anisha tells Chuck that they were just kids back then, and the curse wasn't meant to be real. She tells Chuck if he really loves Cam to let her go and that if they are meant to be, she will return to him.

He then puts Cam in touch with the attractive Howard Blaine (Steve Bacic), who authored a book about penguins. As he watches from afar, the two seem to connect perfectly. Stu and his new three-breasted fiancée visit Chuck to inform him of their impending nuptials and that Cam is heading to Antarctica with Howard. After Chuck finds her, Cam reveals that Howard is already married to someone else and that she'll be back the following Wednesday. Before leaving, Chuck hands Cam a ring box containing a pebble, a reference to the penguin mating ritual in which a male penguin finds a stone and brings it to the female penguin he wants to be with (therefore, proposing to her). Anisha is shown pulling a box out of a closet, opening it, removing a voodoo doll and removing a pin out of it which signifies her releasing Chuck from the curse. A year later, Chuck and Cam are in Antarctica together surrounded by penguins.

Later, Stu is shown with his now wife house-sitting for Chuck and Cam who are married as well. Stu is searching for home-made sex tapes and finds one where Chuck is performing oral sex on a plush penguin while Cam is off-screen making sex sounds. Strangely aroused, they turn the tape off to have sex themselves.

Cast

Reception

The film was panned by critics. According to Rotten Tomatoes, only 5% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 114 reviews. The site's consensus states: "A shortage of laughs and an undercurrent of mean-spiritedness undermine Good Luck Chuck, squandering a decent premise on gross-out humor and shopworn slapstick."[3] On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 19 out of 100, based on 23 reviews, indicating "overwhelming dislike".[4]

Roger Ebert awarded the film 1 out of 4 stars, branding it "potty-mouthed and brain-damaged", whilst his reviewing partner, Richard Roeper also rated it poorly.[5][6]

British film critic Mark Kermode named it the worst film of 2007.

Box office

The film was the second-highest-grossing film at the U.S. box office in its opening weekend, grossing $13.6 million in 2,612 theaters.[2][7] The film went on to have a total box office tally of approximately $35 million U.S. and $24 million foreign.

Accolades

The film earned two Razzie Award nominations including Worst Actress (Jessica Alba) and Worst Screen Couple (Alba and Dane Cook), but lost to Lindsay Lohan for I Know Who Killed Me.[8]

Award Category Nominee Result
Golden Raspberry Awards[8] Worst Actress Jessica Alba Nominated
Worst Screen Combo Jessica Alba and Dane Cook

Production

Good Luck Chuck was filmed from late-September to mid-November 2006. The film was shot in Vancouver, British Columbia and also partly in Edmonton, Alberta, using the Alberta Film Studio for the aquarium scenes and the neighborhood of Old Strathcona for exterior shots.[9]

Soundtrack

The soundtrack was released on 18 September 2007.

  1. "I Was Zapped by the Lucky Super Rainbow" (Flaming Lips)
  2. "Accident Prone" (The Honorary Title)
  3. "Good Luck Chuck" (The Dandy Warhols)
  4. "Love It When You Call" – Cherrytree House Version (The Feeling)
  5. "Good Weekend" (Art Brut)
  6. "Hurry Up Let's Go" (Shout Out Louds)
  7. "Shut Me Out" (Aidan Hawken) – 2:49
  8. "You're Gonna Get It" (Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings)
  9. "The Whistle Song" (Pepper)
  10. "You Might Think" (The Cars)
  11. "Physical" (Olivia Newton-John)
  12. "Bela Lugosi's Dead" (Bauhaus)
  13. "Crazy in Love" (Antique Gold)
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References
  1. "Good Luck Chuck Box Office Data". The Numbers. Nash Information Services. Retrieved October 8, 2011.
  2. "Good Luck Chuck (2007) – Weekend Box Office". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 10 August 2011.
  3. "Good Luck Chuck". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved December 15, 2018.
  4. "Good Luck Chuck (2007): Reviews". Metacritic. CBS. Retrieved December 15, 2018.
  5. Roger Ebert (20 September 2007). "Good Luck Chuck". Chicago Sun-Times.
  6. "Snarky Snippets From 2007 Movie Reviews". The Washington Post. December 29, 2007. Retrieved 3 May 2010.
  7. "'Resident Evil' proves zombies rule box office". Associated Press via Today.com. 23 September 2007. Retrieved 25 September 2007.
  8. https://web.archive.org/web/20120210014824/http://www.razzies.com/history/07release.asp
  9. http://www.filmalberta.com/facility-2
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