You, Me and Dupree

A recently married guy invites his best buddy to crash at his place until he can get himself back on his feet, after his friend loses his job, his car and his pad, all in the same day. Unfortunately for the new bride, the best buddy isn’t about to find a job anytime soon, and ends up spending a lot more time dicking around the house than anything else. Hilarious hi-jinx are supposed to ensue, but slight chuckles ensue instead.

I saw this film about two hours ago, and now that I’m sitting down to write this review, I honestly can’t remember all that much about it. I know that it felt a little too long and that Owen Wilson was pretty funny every now and again, but overall, the film didn’t deliver any sort of consistency in laughs, offering instead, many ongoing scenes with basic chuckles or even worse, not-so-interesting banter between the lead married couple, Matt Dillon and Kate Hudson. I think the film’s main problem might be that, despite having a pretty fun concept (slacker friend crashes in newlywed’s abode), it only has one “funny character” in Wilson, and even then, he’s not as funny as he was in WEDDING CRASHERS, and is definitely missing that obvious chemistry that he shared with Vaughn in that film (the easy back-and-forth). Dillon and Hudson are also a very boring couple whose problems are pretty lame and don’t really involve the audience, despite it taking up a good chunk of the film’s plotline. Much like Wilson/Dillon, the married couple didn’t have much chemistry either, but what did have chemistry was my enthusiasm and Hudson’s backside.

In fact, if there’s one thing that I will walk away with after having seen this movie, it’s that Kate Hudson has got a great ass!! (try and say that like Al Pacino did in HEAT). Seriously, you might want to rent this film for the black bikini scene alone….sweet! But personal perversions aside, allow me to add yet another “not too funny” inclusion to this review in Michael Douglas’ character, who also spends most of his time as the “straight man”, and doesn’t bring any extra dose of “haha” to the flick. And the great Seth Rogen? Criminally underused. So what are we left with? Basically, Wilson’s character acting really goofy and inconsiderate in various scenarios early on, followed by his character acting really goofy and pathetic in various scenarios later. Some laughs, some serious moments, a couple of sight gags and even a couple of ass-shots (unfortunately for us though, they’re Wilson ass-shots!) By the way, is it me or did the filmmakers go out of their way NOT to show us the character of Mandy? What was that all about? Weird. Some of the dialogue was funny, Wilson came through and Hudson was adorable, but the whole thing didn’t really gel and just didn’t offer enough laughs to be worth your hard earned cabbage. Not a classic by any means and a “video movie” if I ever saw one.

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian