howard deutch Tagged Articles at Cinematical

The trailer for My Best Friend's Girl (originally known as "Bachelor No. 2"), starring Kate Hudson and Dane Cook, is now online, and the only word that comes to mind is "monstrosity". Why don't you take a look at it up top. Go ahead, I'll wait here.

Are you as horrified as I am? Normally I prefer not to inflict my negativity about upcoming releases on you; if all I have to contribute is whining, I try to leave the blogging to someone else. But I couldn't pass this up. What we seem to have here is: a) the ten-millionth iteration of the plot where X starts a relationship with Y on a bet or a job but ends up falling in love; b) starring Kate Hudson, the reigning queen of the nondescript rom-com (at least Matthew McConaughey is nowhere to be found); c) co-starring Dane Cook, whose very presence is the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard, as a professional a**hole, and Jason Biggs as an awkward nice guy; and d) directed by Howard Deutch, who is responsible for some of the worst comedies of the last ten years. Oh, and it's named after a song. Despite not being dead, the Cars are spinning in their graves.

On one hand, I'd love to be proven wrong about My Best Friend's Girl; on the other hand, I really, really don't want to subject myself to it. Would it be a dereliction of duty to skip the thing?

Hey, remember Jason Biggs? Since starring in Woody Allen's Anything Else, he hasn't really appeared in ... anything else. Okay, so he co-starred in Jersey Girl and Eight Below, but he hasn't done anything of notice in years -- except for that hysterical short film, The Glitch, of course. I was beginning to think I might see him in the next American Pie direct-to-video sequel before I see him in a big-screen starring role again. Fortunately, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Biggs just got a new gig playing Dane Cook's best bud in Lionsgate's Bachelor No. 2. In addition to Cook, he joins Kate Hudson, Alec Baldwin and Lizzy Caplan (Mean Girls), who just signed on as Hudson's roommate.

As we told you previously, Bachelor follows a guy named Tank (Cook) who makes a living by giving women the worst dates of their lives. Hired by dumped men, Tank's promise is that he'll make the exes come crawling back. However, when his friend (Biggs) is the one broken up with, Tank ends up falling for the dumper (Hudson), making it a tough decision whether to stay loyal to his buddy or follow his heart. Yeah, in some ways it sounds a bit like Cook's upcoming movie Good Luck Chuck -- in which he sleeps with women who then go on to marry their next beau -- with a bit of the competitive love triangle thing from his Employee of the Month thrown in. Bachelor will be directed by Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful's Howard Deutch, but I wouldn't count on anything similar to those John Hughes classics, even with the love triangle storyline. So far this decade, Deutch's most notable work has been The Whole Ten Yards.

Other Biggs movies that could see the light of the projector one day include Michael Ian Black's The Pleasure of Your Company (aka Wedding Daze, aka The Next Girl I See), which MGM has been sitting on in the U.S. for almost a year now. He's also got another movie that seems to have changed names since the last time we wrote about it: Over My Dead Body, which was formerly titled How I Met My Boyfriend's Dead Fiancee (phew! good thing they changed it) -- though THR still gives the longer name.

The Hollywood Reporter is ... reporting that the great Alec Baldwin has joined the cast of the Dane Cook comedy (isn't that an oxymoron?) Bachelor No. 2. Baldwin was not expected to take on any acting work before resuming his Emmy - nominated role on one of the funniest comedies on television -- 30 Rock -- this month. I guess the opportunity to work on a project of this caliber was too difficult to resist. In the film, Cook will play Tank, a guy who is "hired to take girls on horrible dates so they crawl back to the boyfriends they dumped." Tank "struggles with his libido and the meaning of friendship when his best pal needs his help with the girl who dumped him." That girl will be played by Oscar-nominee Kate Hudson, who you'd think would be fleeing from this genre after the dismal You Me and Dupree.

It took me about five minutes of re-reading the plot descriptions of both films that Bachelor No. 2 is different from the upcoming Cook vehicle Good Luck Chuck. Chuck, opening September 21st, is about a guy who girls want to have sex with so they can meet the man they're going to marry. But then he falls for one of them. Um ... really? These movies don't strike anyone as a trifle similar? Oh well. Cook has got the right idea knocking out as many film roles as he possibly can, while he can. I imagine we're about two years away from never hearing his name again. First-timer Jordan Cahan wrote the script for Bachelor, and Howard Deutch is directing. Deutch had a glorious run directing John Hughes scripts in the 80's -- he did Pretty in Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful, and The Great Outdoors, but it's all kind of been downhill from there. Speaking of Bachelor No. 2, why don't I take this opportunity to recommend the excellent Aimee Mann album of the same name?

I'm not sure whether Dane Cook is moving up in the big-screen world, or down. So far he's gone from Jessica Simpson (Employee of the Month) to Jessica Alba (Good Luck Chuck) and, now, to Kate Hudson for his upcoming comedy Bachelor No. 2. Well, one thing's for sure -- he's decided to ditch the Jessicas. Variety reports that Hudson has signed on to star opposite Cook in the film, which was penned by Jordan B. Cahan and will be directed by Howard Deutch (Pretty in Pink). Production is set to begin this August in Boston (Cook's hometown, I believe) with Manangement 360, Terra Films and Cook's Superfinger Entertainment producing.

In all fairness, I think Cook finally found a role that suits him perfectly; one that allows him to utilize the raunchy style of comedy that made him famous in the first place. In Bachelor No. 2, he'll play a guy hired by men who have recently been dumped to take out their ex-girlfriends and show them a miserable time. The idea is that they'll be so disgusted and turned off by what is out there, they'll immediately run back to their old boyfriend who'll lovingly welcome them with open arms. However, problems arise when Cook's character is asked to take out the ex-girlfriend of his best friend who, I assume, will be played by Hudson (the ex-girlfriend, not the best friend). The two hit it off, he screws over his best friend and the moral of the story will be ...

I've always had a thing for Hudson (she was my celebrity crush in our Cinematical/Moviefone poll), but the girl is killing me with all these romantic comedies. Do something different Kate! I really want to pimp your skills, but you're giving me absolutely nothing to work with. You, Me and Dupree? Raising Helen? Alex & Emma? And what's next -- Fool's Gold with Matthew McConaughey? I guess I'll just have to keep watching Almost Famous over and over until the girl finally gives us a role worth talking about.

In my opinion, Dane Cook's stand-up is a lot funnier than his acting. You can blame it on bad scripts all day long, but I like to think our friend Cook is suffering from a severe case of "Chris Rock syndrome" -- meaning he's having a heck of a hard time making the jump from "that funny dude on stage" to "that hysterical dude on screen." That said, he's a tough guy to cast and his roles haven't shown us a ton of range. Whereas I see him more as the perfect villain (an a**hole of an ex-boyfriend, perhaps), he keeps landing gigs as the nice guy with woman troubles. However, that might change with his latest role; The Hollywood Reporter tells us Cook is in final negotiations to star in Bachelor No. 2 for Lionsgate, with Howard Deutch (Pretty in Pink) all but set to direct.

Although Cook will once again play a guy whose biggest problem lies with the opposite sex, this time he'll have a chance to play up the sleazeball role. Script centers on a guy named Tank (Cook) who's hired to take girls out on bad dates -- dates that end in such a horrific way that these girls are forced to run back into the arms of their previous boyfriend, Tank's client. Of course it shouldn't be too hard to figure out where this is going; eventually his best friend asks him for help getting back together with his girlfriend and, well, I assume complications arise when Tank actually digs her in a more than friends kind of way. Script was penned by Jordan B. Cahan, and they're currently eying an August start date. Cook, who's been quite the busy bee as of late, can next be seen this weekend in Mr. Brooks, then later this summer in Good Luck Chuck, and then this fall in Dan in Real Life, opposite Steve Carell.