My Best Friend’s Girl (Unrated) – DVD Review

By June L. Jan 19, 2009, 13:24 GMT

A man who makes his living convincing women to run back into the arms of the men they have recently dumped is hired by his best friend to take out the beauty he longs to win back. ...more

Be warned, this is NOT a sweetly sentimental story of boy meets girl but can’t have her because she is with his best friend….well, that IS part of the plot, but it unfolds in a very different way. 

What if your best friend is a super nice guy, and you are a jerk, so much of a jerk that you hire yourself out to be a super bad date to convince women to go back to their errant boyfriends?  Yeah, you are a hero to the guys, but it doesn’t allow you to meet someone to love. 

Sherman “Tank” Turner (Dane Cook) works in a customer satisfaction call center for an air filter company.  In the evenings he hires out as a nightmare date, rude, crude, lewd and very able to make women see the error of their ways in dumping boyfriends who have gone astray.

Tank’s housemate Dustin (Jason Biggs) is just the opposite, a sweet guy with a great job and good looking, but he has been dumped by his girlfriend Alexis (Kate Hudson) for getting too serious in the relationship. 

Naturally Dustin hires Tank, who promises the worst date of a life time, however he hasn’t counted on becoming attracted to Alexis, who for some reason isn’t driven away by his behavior.  Is Tank really falling for Alexis?  And can he change and become someone other than the jerk he seems to be? 

This is not going to be a film that everyone likes.  There are a lot of bad moments when Tank is being at his worst, and yet there are some hilarious bits as well.  We see how Tank learned his trade, his father Professor Turner (Alec Baldwin) teaches women’s studies at a college and enjoys, shall we say, some unusual fringe benefits. 

If you can take the awful behavior and the more than disgusting language, the funny moments do make you laugh, and there is a touch of pathos in Tank.  In spite of bravado and seemingly tough exterior, there is a hint that the real Tank may be a better guy than anyone expects. 

There are clues to his true character throughout, so you don’t hate him, in spite of his abysmal behavior. 

My Best Friend’s Girl Unrated is presented on single disc, widescreen with a playing time of 112 minutes.  Special Features include two audio commentaries for the film, one with actor Jason Biggs, writer Jordan Cohan, and the other with director Howard Deutsch.  There is a making of featurette “Making It in Beantown:  Where it all Began,” and a featurette “The Cast’s Guide to Dating.” 

Professor Turner has a unique scale for grading or rating and it is explained in “A to Z:  Professor Turner’s Sexist Rating System.  “The Prom:  Teenage Rite of Passage” is a hilarious look at this familiar activity.  There are also deleted and extended scenes.  

My Best Friend’s Girl is one of those films that moves audiences between cringing and laughing throughout, and it will depend upon the viewer’s tolerance for crudeness as to whether or not the movie is enjoyed.

My Best Friend’s Girl (Unrated) is now available at Amazon. It is available for pre-order at AmazonUK for a March 30th release. Visit the DVD database for more information.