I really don’t know what to say about this now that I left my “pounding at the keyboard minutes after the movie finished” review stewing over night. Thinking of the movie now, flashes of it keep coming at me and I really don’t think it offended me as much as I thought it did at the time. Jessica Alba is delightfully clutzy, Dane Cook is like Dennis Quaid lite, and you even get a few seconds of Jodelle Ferland at the end.

The whole thing starts out sweet enough – like Just My Luck, Big, or 13 Going on 30 – we see the Chuck of the title as a kid, and the “witch” of the class puts a hex on him at a party ‘cos he won’t show her what’s inside his pants (this scene in itself goes pretty shockingly far considering how uptight people are about putting kids and sex together in the same sentence let alone the same room).

It’s when we shift to the present, and we ultimately enter what can only be described as the movie’s soft porn period. There’s a montage, I guess the closest thing I can think of it’s comparable to is the William Tell scene in A Clockwork Orange ? (needless to say that’s where the similarities end) And seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie drop all its paltry good will so fast as this one does in this one “hilarious” montage. How anyone can still like Charlie after this is beyond me. It’s movies like this where on some level this kind of behaviour actually passes on a massive scale for some people as recognisable and sidesplitting maturity; as though all being grown-up entails is the ability to put genitals together like Lego bricks (hmm, maybe I’m onto something there…) … it really makes me wonder why it’s worth trying to do any good in the world anymore. It’s really that depressing to me (psst! guess which part of this review was salvaged from the “pounding at the keys” review? lol).

But like I said … I can’t stay mad at it. I laughed a bunch of times, there’s Jessica, there’s Jodelle (no matter how short the screentime, always worth it), and I’d be lying if I said the third boob didn’t catch my eye There’s definitely worse things out there this year.