My Best Friend’s Girl

A smooth operator (Dane Cook) makes a second income by giving women dates from hell so that his clients (their ex-boyfriends) will look good by comparison. Performing this service for his roommate (Jason Biggs), he actually begins falling for the girl (Kate Hudson). Jordan Cahan’s script is even more contrived than it sounds; it never finds its comic or structural rhythm, and director Howard Deutch never imposes one. Instead, Deutch passes the buck to his three stars—and they’re up to the challenge, even if the material isn’t up to their level. Cook is surprisingly sympathetic as a scoundrel whose heart isn’t really in it, and he, Hudson and Biggs make even Cahan’s clunkiest lines (and there are plenty of them) sound funnier than they really are. Alec Baldwin overacts merrily as Cook’s randy father.