I’m not sure exactly what I did to inflict such a horrid punishment as watching a Dane Cook movie, but I’m quite sure whatever it is I did, I deserved my fate. But as I attempted to find a film truly terrible one stood out for a variety of reasons, though almost all of them had to do with the intriguing cast (Kate Hudson, Alec Baldwin, Lizzy Caplan, Jason Biggs and Diora Baird) which offered at least a glimmer of hope that perhaps a scene or two would be amusing, or dare I hope, entertaining, even with the black hole that is Dane Cook.

But as it turns out, My Best Friend’s Girl truly is an absolute pile. It never attains to be anything but the most base of romantic comedies, constantly trotting out cliche after cliche with a straight face. But even worse, when it somehow stumbles onto a plotline that might actually skewer the genre, it abruptly changes course in order to remain on the same stilted and boring path that it had followed for the rest of the film. And at that point, all one can do is laugh at how truly inept this film is.

But their is some hope, and it resides fully in the bosom of one Alec Baldwin. Riding high on his comedic talents, Baldwin steals every scene he enters, never once falling prey to the urge to sleepwalk through the film as every other cast member does. Instead, he aims for a higher purpose, to make college coeds bluster with delight at such a charismatic braggadocio, marking this as one of the Greatest Moments in Cinema History.

It is time I let you in on a little secret, Gossip wasn’t the movie I originally intended to review for this week. What I had wanted to review was a small film from the Czech Republic called Sílení (Lunacy). It was described as a mixture of live action and stop-motion animation that was based on the works of the Marquis de Sade but also borrows from several short stories by Edgar Allen Poe. I know, it sounds like all manner of awesome. But there were some … complications.

Now we lucked out and received the film from Netflix over a week ago, ensuring us plenty of time to screen the film and review it. Both Anna and I were looking forward to the film, and the DVD certainly had us intrigued, what with an image of a cow’s tongue inching along as if it was a worm for the cover art. Then, when the film opened with a disclaimer that the film would disgust and revile all those who watched it, our interests was definitely piqued. But something funny happened on the way to the film’s ending, it didn’t disgust us, it bored us.

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Who knew trying to rack down a simple trailer for a Kate Hudson film would be so difficult? Sure, this is pre-Almost Famous Kate Hudson, but I’m fairly confident this was still Goldie Hawn/Bill Hudson post-coitus Kate Hudson. And besides Kate Hudson, about a billion other recognizable actors were in this movie as well. Namely James Marsden, Lena Headey, Norman Reedus, Eric Bogosian, Edward James Olmos, Joshua Jackson, and Mif.

Mif?

Who the hell is Mif?

Well to find out, you will just have to watch next week’s film, Gossip.

Gossip Trailer

P.S. – Interesting bit of meta for those of you into that sort of thing; Poe (the singer not the writer) also appears in the film. She just so happens to be the sister of Mark Z. Danielewski (the writer not the singer) who wrote Christian’s favorite book House of Leaves. You might have heard him mention it once or twice.

P.P.S. – This site is layered like an ogre, yo!