Review of My Best Friend's Girl (2008) by Chads. — 20 Sep 2008

Harry was wrong, the Harry of Rob Reiner's "When Harry Met Sally", who informed Sally that a man and a woman can't be friends, because the sex part always gets in the way. While this might've been true back in 1989, romance has undergone a transformation(if you're a believer in art being a reflection on modern life) since then, as conveyed in the pages of a thousand chick-lit novels, where contemporary women, unlike the Sally Albrights and Elaine Robinsons from last century, prefer their men be big and stupid.

No nice guys. No f*****' vegans. Beefcake! Beefcake! Objectification, after all, works both ways. In "My Best Friend's Girl", when Alexis(Kate Hudson) meets Tank(Dane Cook), as a result of Dusty's machinations, the nice guy miscalculates what women want, because he sees them as being either hopeless romantics(like Sally), or submissive whores(like the women from his massive porn collection).

So naturally, Alexis dumps him. So naturally, Dusty(Jason Biggs), being absolutely clueless about girls, hires his roommate to get her back, seemingly unaware that he has no charisma, no reason for Alexis to love him.

As part of Tank's services rendered to make Dusty look like the more attractive alternative, Alexis is confronted by topless dancers at a nudie bar, once considered a hostile place for a nice girl(like the Katherine Ross character in Mike Nichols' "The Graduate"), no longer carries the cultural currency to offend, especially a late-blooming post-feminist such as Alexis.

Chick-lit provides women(who might be hitched to a bland guy like Dusty here), with a little escapist fun by indulging in their fantasy of having a fling with the wrong man, a man like Tank, a sex machine, a womanizer.

Alexis is supposed to fall for Dusty. We're supposed to root for Dusty, but we don't. The Geek(Anthony Michael Hall in "Sixteen Candles") probably wacked off to porn. Duckie(Jon Cryer in "Pretty in Pink") probably wacked off to porn, too.

But we didn't see the porn. That's the problem with Dusty; we see the porn. He seems more pathetic, than sympathetic. Alexis falls for Mr. Wrong. "My Best Friend's Girl" posits the idea that Mr.

Wrong is the new Mr. Right.