Why did a critically panned comedy about a cursed dentist find box office success?

Entertainment · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Released in 2007, Good Luck Chuck follows a dentist who discovers that every woman he sleeps with finds her true love immediately after. Despite being savaged by critics for its humor and chemistry, the film managed to turn a profit, grossing nearly $60 million against a $25 million budget.

The premise of Good Luck Chuck centers on Charlie Logan, a dentist who was hexed as a 10-year-old in 1985 by a goth girl named Anisha Carpenter. After he rejected her sexual advances during a game of spin the bottle, she cursed him so that any woman he slept with would find her soulmate in the next man she encountered. By adulthood, this reputation as a 'lucky charm' leads to a chaotic life of casual encounters, until he falls for Cam Wexler, a clumsy penguin scientist.

Directed by Mark Helfrich in his directorial debut, the film was shot in Vancouver and Edmonton between late September and mid-November 2006. It hit theaters on September 21, 2007, and was met with intense critical hostility. Rotten Tomatoes recorded a mere 5% approval rating from 111 reviews, while Metacritic gave it a score of 19 out of 100. Critics like Roger Ebert labeled it 'potty-mouthed and brain-damaged,' and Mark Kermode famously named it the worst film of 2007.

Despite the critical consensus that the film suffered from a lack of laughs and mean-spiritedness, it performed respectably at the box office. It opened as the second-highest-grossing film in the U.S. that weekend, earning $13.6 million across 2,612 theaters. Its total global haul reached approximately $59.8 million. The film even received Razzie Award nominations for Worst Actress and Worst Screen Couple, though it ultimately lost those categories to other contenders.

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