Grade: F

Some movies are so scummy that after watching them you feel the need for a shower; after sitting through this one, you might think a scouring pad is in order. Even in the stream of coarse comedies being emitted by Hollywood, this combination of soft-core porn, vulgar language, sexism and crude slapstick, in which all the male characters are sex-crazed maniacs and all the female ones vacuous airheads, lowers the bar to new depths. And it just happens to star the dreariest bargain-basement version of Will Ferrell on camera today—Dane Cook.

Cook plays Charlie, a single dentist without a steady girlfriend. But he has a lot of ex-girlfriends, who know that he’s proven a lucky charm—for them. They claim that shortly after having sex with Charlie, any girl will shortly meet the man she’ll marry. (Supposedly the “hex” results from his refusal to engage with a Goth girl at a “spin the bottle” party way back in his youth and a curse she put on him.) That revelation—which gets posted, of course, on the web—leads a small army of buxom babes to invade Charlie’s waiting room and throw themselves at him. And being a charitable sort of fellow, he’s happy to comply. Cue a disgusting montage of bedroom scenes documenting the various positions he and his stream of one-night stands experiment with.

But that’s not all the smut “Good Luck Chuck” provides. In addition to the visual stream of slapstick shtick Charlie’s antics offer, we’re treated to a barrage of ultra-blue verbal stuff (as well as gay slurs) from Dan Fogler (incredibly, even worse than he was in “Balls of Fury”) as Stu, our hero’s plastic-surgeon buddy, a would-be Lothario who can’t pick up a dame to save his soul and has to be content with servicing himself with the help of grapefruit (as if this idea wasn’t awful enough in the abstract, we’re actually shown him engaged in the act). And even that isn’t the nadir to which the movie sinks: we’re also forced to endure some fat woman gags, when Charlie’s virtually assaulted by his heavy-hipped, man-hungry receptionist (Ellia English)—in an episode that’s, unbelievably, meant to be sweet!—and then in a far uglier episode involving a grossly overweight woman (Jodie Stewart).

Of course, there has to be some real romance in the mix, and it’s purportedly provided by Charlie’s immediate attraction to Cam Wexler (Jessica Alba), the gorgeous but klutzy head of the penguin exhibit at the local zoo, whom he can’t afford to have sex with (because she might wind up with the next guy she meets), even after he convinces her to have anything to do with him. Nothing is less funny than Charlie’s frantic obsession with Cam, which drives her further and further away from him, especially as it’s played out by Cook with an amateurishness that’s a new screen low for him, even keeping “Employee of the Month” in mind. Unless it’s the slacker-based drug humor associated with Cam’s brother Joe (zombie-like Lonny Ross), whom we’re meant to believe that this nice girl keeps on as her assistant caring for the animals she loves despite his manifest unreliability.

Nobody could have redeemed the unsavory brew cooked up by scripter Josh Stolberg here, but director Mark Helfrich—who pushes every gross moment and cheap joke into your face—certainly isn’t the man for the job. Nor is Cook, the weakest excuse for a comic leading man the screen has seen in a long while. Alba smiles, poses, and undresses on cue—the usual use of her modest talents—but what possible justification can there be for Fogler, who creates a character so intensely odious that you want to reach out at the screen and throttle him? Come to think of it, perhaps we should thank him for helping us see just how loathsome Stu is. The parade of bare-breasted blondes and brunettes who populate the supporting cast—including the one with three breasts—are better left unnamed, but one can only feel a sense of shared shame for English and Stewart.

But there’s no sense of real shame in “Good Luck Chuck.” At least when Billy Wilder tried to send up sex farce in “Kiss Me Stupid” back in 1964, he apologized when the experiment failed and turned out smutty. The makers of this monstrous assault on good taste not only don’t seem at all embarrassed by what they’ve wrought, but add to the insult they’ve perpetrated with sequences under the closing credits that—amazingly—are even crasser than anything that’s preceded them. They cap what—one hopes—will prove to be the year’s worst movie.