That's pretty much how I felt after sitting through this one. I know, I know: If I expected a quality movie with a title like that, I deserve what I get. But surely this cheapie hybrid of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Wayne's World, Dazed and Confused and especially Dumb & Dumber could have been at least occasionally hilarious, instead of only fitfully amusing and mainly annoying.
I know it's not just me. Yeah, I'm getting pretty old (29 next week!) and I may be falling out of touch with what's currently considered 'funny', but I don't think that's it. Maybe it's just that Dude, Where's My Car just isn't all that funny. True, I giggled a few times, but if you had two stoned morons standing next to you at the local gas pumps, you'd eventually start laughing at them also, once your initial annoyance wore off.
I was initially intrigued by the lightweight but fun-sounding plot: Two stoner buddies wake up one morning and can remember nothing of the night before...and their car is gone. (Hence the clever title.) As a fan of films like Ferris Bueller's Day Off, After Hours and even Three O'Clock High, I've always been a sucker for those movies that all take place in one day (or night). It seemed fairly possible that I could derive some guilty pleasure from this disposable teen comedy.
I was wrong.
While the plot starts out well enough with our two heroes trying to retrace their steps and find the car, things quickly spiral into rampant absurdity. As the duo stops at a Chinese Drive-Thru, their every comments is met by a nasty sounding "...and then?" from the employee. The idiots scream "NO AND THEN!" about thirty times and then they drive off. This one gag illustrates what's wrong with the whole movie, as we're never told WHY the words 'and then' are supposed to be funny. More often than not in Dude, the antics come off more like they're supposed to be funny, and your immediate reaction will be "Yeah, but it isn't...funny, that is."
Buried amidst the cartoonish proceedings are some surprisingly winning performances, particularly by the two leads. Ashton Kutcher (of TV's That 70's Show) has an affable goofiness that could work well given a few half-decent gags. And Seann William Scott has proven in his previous roles (American Pie, Final Destination and Road Trip) that he has a solid charm onscreen, in addition to knowing his way around a punch-line. That two such potentially strong performances are destroyed by Philip Stark's atrocious script is this movie's worst sin.
If Stark had been content to keep this teen comedy based somewhat in reality, we might have had an enjoyably goofy little diversion. Unfortunately, this script is saddled with simply atrocious plot twists, most of which involve a very uninteresting search for some space relic that all these freaky cult guys are looking for. It sounds fun. It's not. If we had stayed on earth, this movie might have become a cult comedy that could win lots of people over. But with all the cosmic mumbo-jumbo, it destroys any credibility this already brain-dead movie could have generated.
As our most recent presidential election should have proven, stupidity by itself is not funny. If there's something for the stupidity to bounce off of, then you maybe have the chance for some comedy. But when every character onscreen and every line of dialogue just reeks of such stupidity, laughs get tougher to come by. That's why all the best movie comedies usually have 'straight men' in them. Two idiots and a librarian could be funny. Two idiots being stupid alone is just sad.
Near the end of the movie, the space aliens (yes, I said Space Aliens) give our pothead heroes some space jewelry that makes their girlfriend's boobs get bigger. If that's the kind of stuff that makes you laugh, then you should see this movie immediately.
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