This review has been ‘repurposed’ from my other site, theOneliner.com
Tank (Dane Cook) makes a living as a professional arsehole. Not just during his call centre day job, but also his sideline of unique relationship counselling. Should a bloke screw up so badly he gets dumped, Tank can be called upon, for a small cash sum, to pick up the woman and question and show her a bad time. Irritatingly obnoxious, and outrageous, and etc, and etc, the idea being that he’s such a git that the woman in question will be driven back into the arms of the slightly less dickish guy they’ve dumped.
All is well, for Tank if not the audience, until Tank’s cousin and flatmate Dustin (Jason Biggs) calls upon him to secure the affections of a workmate he’s fixated on despite the absence of much reciprocation. This brings about the hardly unexpected consequence of Tank falling in love with this screeching harridan Alexis (Kate Hudson), and you can probably write the rest of the script yourself from there on in. In fact, you’ll probably be able to do a significantly better job than the one that’s wound up on screen.
Staggering between bouts of supposedly extreme bad taste and slushy sentimentality as Tank attempts to get in touch with his true emotions or some such bollocks, it’s main problem is that it simply isn’t in the least bit funny. Even if there was any humour inherent in the script, and I assure you there is not, then the simple act of casting Jason Biggs pretty much guarantees that this is going to be as much fun as an evening on the wet end of a waterboarding.
I could go on, I suppose, talking about the limp performances and the criminal misuse of a typically charismatic Alec Baldwin, the only brief high point, but I’d largely be repeating myself. This film just isn’t funny enough, or indeed funny at all, and as such it’s something of a pathetic failure. Could only be worse if it had Steve Martin in it. Avoid.