Movie Info

Good Luck Chuck is a 2007 comedy film starring Jessica Alba and Dane Cook.
This movie began filming in June 2006 in Vancouver and Edmonton, with some scenes shot in Los Angeles.
Contents[hide]
1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Trivia
4 Critical reception
5 Box office performance
6 Pop culture references

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[edit] Plot
The movie begins in 1985 in a flashback scene where Chuck (Connor Price) refused to kiss a goth girl (Sasha Pieterse) when he was ten years old, she placed a curse on him: every single woman he sleeps with will break up with him and marry the next man she meets.
Chuck, now in his thirties (Dane Cook) and running a dentist practice in the same building as his best friend Stu (Dan Fogler) who works as a plastic surgeon, Chuck finds himself unable to tell girls he loves them. This leads to an eventual breakup, but soon leads to his ex-girlfriend getting married. At one such wedding, Chuck becomes enamored with Cam Wexler (Jessica Alba), a sometimes clumsy girl who nevertheless appears quite friendly. Chuck tries to ask Cam out on a date, but she gently refuses him.
While working at her penguin habitat, Cam accidentally slips and breaks her tooth (later in the film, Cam says that the penguins that she takes care of are Gentoo penguins when they are in fact African penguins). Having Chuck's card in hand, she calls him and he agrees to work on her tooth. After the dental treatment, he asks her to go out with him instead of paying him. She's reluctant to go out with him, but she eventually agrees. During the time that Chuck still has eyes for Cam, Stu starts to become convinced that there's something about Chuck's pattern of girls getting married as soon as he has sex with them. This is only compounded when an article on a dating site tells of Chuck's prowess. Stu eventually convinces Chuck to embrace the now many women who visit his practice, arguing that there's nothing better than having a bunch of guilt-free sex. However, after having sex with a bunch of women, Chuck wants to stop and have a serious relationship with Cam.
Worried that the curse is real, Stu convinces Chuck to date and sleep with an extremely overweight and ugly woman to see if she'll get married afterwards. Chuck tries to get Stu to date the woman after the deed to see if they get married, hoping that the curse will prove to be false. However, Stu chickens out and only pretends to ask the woman out. This proves to be a problem when he eventually gives in to Cam's advances and has sex with her. Chuck is now convinced that Cam wants to go out with the author of a book about penguins, who Cam has raved about. Chuck attempts to track down the girl who placed the curse on him when they were kids. Now a happily married woman with a child, the former goth girl tells Chuck that the curse wasn't meant to be real. Still convinced that Cam will date and eventually marry the book author, Chuck tries desperately to get Cam's attention and ask her to marry him. His attempts, though, cause Cam to become convinced he's stalking her and she breaks up with him.
Now deciding to let fate take its course, Chuck puts Cam in touch with the book author, and the two seem to connect instantly (notably, the book author at times appears to be as clumsy as Cam). Stu visits Chuck and convinces him to chase after Cam, who is now headed to Antarctica with the book author. After buying $17,000 worth of tickets (since he wasn't sure which flight Cam might have been on), Chuck confronts Cam. Cam reveals that the book author is already married to someone else, and that she's only going for a week - not the 6 months Chuck thought. Chuck hands Cam a ring box, and Cam opens it to reveal 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. Cam calls out for Chuck, who left the plane, and Chuck runs back to Cam, the curse having finally been broken (the adult woman who placed the curse on Chuck in the first place is shown to pull out a voodoo doll she placed a pin through, and pulls the pin out). Now both in Antarctica surrounded by penguins, Chuck and Cam kiss, but their tongues get frozen together.

[edit] Cast
Dane Cook as Charlie / Chuck
Jessica Alba as Cam Wexler
Dan Fogler as Stu
Chelan Simmons as Carol
Connor Price as Young Charlie
Troy Gentile as Young Stu
Sasha Pieterse as Goth Girl

[edit] Trivia
Jennifer Love Hewitt was offered the role of "Cam Wexler", but turned it down because of scheduling conflicts. The role then went to Jessica Alba.
The original script was titled "The Warm-Up Guy".
The quartet that sings to Cam is Antique Gold, the 2006 Seniors Champions of the Barbershop Harmony Society.
In the movie, the building where Chuck and Stu work at is named the Seltaeb building. Backwards, "seltaeb" is "beatles". Seltaeb was also the name of the corporation which in 1964, oversaw product licensing arrangements for The Beatles.
Originally, New Line Cinema was set to distribute, but they gave the film to Lionsgate shortly before production. A similar situation occurred when the studio gave distribution rights for Alpha Dog to Universal Pictures, but that case was related to controversy over real-life events.

[edit] Critical reception
The film received very negative reviews from critics. As of October 23, 2007 on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, only 3% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 96 reviews.[1] On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 19 out of 100, based on 21 reviews, indicating generally negative reviews.[2]
Roger Ebert gave the film 1 out of 4 stars, saying it was "potty-mouthed and brain-damaged" and "There is a scene in this movie where a penguin bites Dane Cook in the crotch. I'd like to find that penguin and buy it a drink." [3] [4]
Mark Kermode also threw barbs of a similar nature on his Friday afternoon film review spot on Radio 5 Live with Simon Mayo, condemning the film as a 'grisly, horrible, barfsome American comedy...with this really grotesquely loathsome guy', and naming it as his worst film of the year for 2007.

[edit] Box office performance
The film was the #2 movie at the U.S. box office in its opening weekend, grossing $13.6 million in 2,612 theaters.[5][6]
On it's opening weekend at the UK Box Office despite a hefty panning from critics, the picture managed to take the #1 spot
Many of these negative reviews have been put down to the intensly nude nature of the movie, with full screen shots of breasts commonplace. Jessica Alba is shown partially naked, takes of her bra and is seen to have sex with the male movie star during the film.