How many times have we seen this movie now? The old slacker friend moves in with his recently married/successful friend for hijinks and a moral lesson. Is this really the best entertainment Hollywood has to offer for a peak mid-summer release?
You, Me and Dupree sloshes through 108 minutes of bathroom humor, masturbation jokes, and way too much Owen Wilson. I could buy the guy in Meet the Parents and Wedding Crashers, but as Dupree (whose name, if you take a shot each time it is said in the film, will have you drunk in no less than three minutes) his dry-yet-endearing number plays itself out by the start of the second act.
Carl (Dillon) and Molly (Hudson) are recent newlyweds. They have just bought a house and both hold down steady jobs. The same can’t be said for Dupree, who just lost his job because he took an “unauthorized” week off work to attend the wedding and be the best man. Carl can’t accept that his best friend is out on the street, so he invites him to stay at his home until he can get back on his feet. To say Dupree is in no rush to get his life together would be an understatement, and he soon wreaks havoc in Carl and Molly’s life. Adding to the frustration is the fact that Carl’s boss/father-in-law (a recently embalmed Michael Douglas) seems completely unhappy with the marriage.
This is tired, tired genre film making that will really only please die-hard Wilson fans. That, at one point, Kate Hudson is forced to cover her face with a cloth while plunging one of Dupree’s dumps is truly embarrassing. As a comedy the film is dead-on-arrival, resorting to the most formulaic of scenarios and scatological humor in the faint hope that someone will giggle out of pity. As a drama, which the third act predominately is, the movie is sappy melodrama that won’t have one person giving, as Clark Griswold would say, “a frog’s fat ass,” about the outcome.
I’m really at a loss for adjectives right now to describe what a bust this summer has been on the whole. You, Me and Dupree is exactly the kind of brainless, witless junk that Hollywood knows it can peel off the scrap heap at any time and make a quick trip to the bank on. As long as the public keeps falling for the shiny stars and deceptive trailers we will continue to agonize through this exact same film over, and over, and over again.
GRADE: F
Studio: Universal Pictures
Length: 108 Minutes
Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, brief nudity, crude humor, language and a drug reference.
Theatrical Release: July 14, 2006
Directed by: Anthony Russo & Joe Russo
Written by: Mike LeSieur
Cast: Owen Wilson, Kate Hudson, Matt Dillon, Michael Douglas, Seth Rogen, Amanda Detmer
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