Josh Lucas vs. Cole Hauser
Battle of the Southern Shitkickers

WARNING: Contains Sweet Home Alabama and White Oleander spoilers!

That was a nice little career Cole Hauser had, once upon a time. He had so much going for him: rugged good looks, friendship with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, proximity to the It Boy of Tomorrow (Colin Farrell, with whom Hauser starred in Tigerland and Hart's War), and a cool name. That wasn't a household name, mind you, but maybe if he'd really applied himself, he might have worked his way up to being the Bill Paxton of his generation.

Then Legally Blonde made $95 million.

You might wonder, "What possible affect could the success of a frothy, candy-coloured chick flick have on the career prospects of an all-American manly man?" Well, much as a butterfly flapping its wings in China can cause a storm of lazy analogies over New York City, so does chaos theory operate among Hollywood movie studios. The unexpected success of Legally Blonde meant that, the next time Reese Witherspoon made a frothy romantic comedy, the studio that released it would pour tens of millions of marketing dollars into ensuring that lightning struck again. (And hell, why not make a literal lightning strike a plot point in the movie, just for fun!) The real draw in Witherspoon's next romantic comedy -- the cute, cookie-cutter romcom Sweet Home Alabama -- is obviously Witherspoon herself, and her non-dilemma of choosing between her tight-assed Manhattan fiancé or the Southern-fried sweetheart whose child bride she'd been years before. This means the Southern-fried sweetheart had to be a rugged manly man (to differentiate him from the somewhat wussy Manhattanite) -- someone not too famous, because he couldn't be more famous than Reese Witherspoon. How about a redhead? How about Josh Lucas?

And that's where Sweet Home Alabama went ahead and buried Cole Hauser. (It's not inconceivable, actually, that Cole Hauser even read for the part in Alabama that ended up going to Josh Lucas; since neither of them really had much of a background in comedy and, oh yeah, since they are virtually identical -- both their head shots were probably on someone's desk in the Touchstone office at some point.) But Alabama isn't just bad for Hauser because he isn't in it, and a guy who looks just like him is. It's not bad for Hauser because Alabama -- in addition to not co-starring him -- opened at #1 and grossed $84 million in just over three weeks, while White Oleander (the current movie Hauser is actually in) opened at #7 and quickly took its leave of the top ten. No: the real reason Alabama is bad for Hauser is that the guy who looks just like Cole Hauser gets the girl in the successful, heartwarming romcom, while the guy who is Cole Hauser is playing a pedophile in the unsuccessful glorified Lifetime movie. Oh, and both those things are happening down the hall from each other at the multiplex.

I guess if Cole Hauser wanted to look on the bright side, he could tell himself that no one will see White Oleander, and that many of the people who see Alabama might think, if they see Hauser again in The Fast and the Furious 2, that he was so darling in Alabama. But what is more likely is that as many (though few of the same) people who saw Hauser in White Oleander will see him in F&F2, whereas everyone everywhere will see Josh Lucas in The Hulk and remember how much they liked him as that nice boy in Alabama. And they won't even know there is another guy out there who looks a lot like Josh Lucas. And then, eventually, there won't be.

Bye, Cole Hauser! Don't blame us: blame Legally Blonde.

Advantage: Lucas