Review of You, Me and Dupree (2006) by Markb. — 21 Jul 2006

Comedies about the Houseguest From Hell (aka The Thing That Wouldn't Leave) are notoriously difficult to pull off, largely because one tends to sympathize too much with the beleaguered captive hosts to find their inability to unload the obnoxious, overbearing jerks who've taken up permanent residence too terribly funny.

That's why I never much enjoyed The Man Who Came To Dinner, although What About Bob? tweaked the formula perfectly: the psychiatrist/author played by Richard Dreyfuss was such an unlikable, self-centered prig that it was a real pleasure watching childlike neurotic Bill Murray innocently torture him.

My reservations about this subgenre, however, are no excuse or explanation for why the latest example of it is so astonishingly, jaw-droppingly inept on nearly every possible level. Newlyweds Carl and Molly (Matt Dillon, Kate Hudson) take in Carl's recently unemployed, mega-slacker buddy Dupree (Owen Wilson); since the two guys have been best buds for 25 years, Carl's apparently complete naivete about Dupree's triple-digit bad habits and total lack of consideration for his hosts (or the possibility that Carl knew all about them but still subjects his wife to Dupree anyway) seems to indicate a marriage whose lifespan is doomed to make that of Britney Spears and Jason Allen Alexander look like Paul Newman's and Joanne Woodward's by comparison.

Mark Twain, in a hilarious essay, excoriated James Fenimore Cooper for blatant character inconsistencies in his most famous character, frontiersman Natty Bumppo, pointing out that Cooper had Bumppo talking like a British nobleman in one chapter in one chapter and an illiterate field hand the next.

Twain would have a field day with this script! The three major characters arbitrarily change personalities and qualities for no other reason than to allow the screenwriter to sledgehammer his logistical giant round pegs through a seemingly endless number of square holes: Carl shifts from loving husband to inconsiderate workaholic to near-psycho; Molly from understandably detesting Dupree to becoming his closest confidant; Dupree himself from infantile, self-absorbed creep to naueseatingly beatific New Age Leo Buscaglia clone with no logic, apparent pattern or satiric intent.

It's no surprise that directors Anthony and Joe Russo were involved with TV's Arrested Development because this movie looks like eight different sitcom scripts by eight different writers randomly shuffled and run through a shredder.

(Hmmm, not a bad idea, actually.) Gags so deadeningly predictable as to possibly make this movie the subject of a drinking game once it hits DVD (although participants shouldn't even TRY to walk home much less drive afterward) and a singularly pointless climactric chase scene in and of themselves wouldn't relegate You, Me & Dupree to its own unique, fetid little circle of Movie Hell, but the moviemakers' truly puzzling, apparent hatred and fear of women (or at the very least, their absolute refusal to try to understand them) is more than enough to do the job.

Not only do the Russos not even bother to show us the school librarian that Molly, in one of the film's too-numerous-to-enumarate improbabilities, fixes Dupree up with, but the character is disparagingly referred to BY HER FRIEND MOLLY as a "slut"; Annie, the wife of Carl's second-best friend Neil (Seth Rogen, who was wonderful in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and totally wasted here) is ALSO never seen but is depicted as a shrill, nagging harpy who's a PSA for permanent bachelorhood.

(Poor Amanda Detmer!) And in keeping with the general pattern, I guess, even though we see plenty of Carl's manipulative boss and father-in-law (Michael Douglas), we never get to see Molly's mom--didn't she even bother to show up at the wedding?!? Of the leads, Hudson at least manages a few wry facial expressions that make her performance this movie's closest thing to passable; Dillon, who so brilliantly navigated the inherent contradictions of his racist-with-reasons cop in last year's Crash, is totally defeated here; and Douglas, between this and 2006's earlier The Sentinel, seems to be throwing in the towel completely.

Worst of all is Wilson as the sock-abusing Dupree; what this movie would describe as his essential "Owen-ness" is nothing more than evidence that he's a one-trick pony who's getting more and more tiresome in movie after movie.

For every Wedding crashers, where clever writing and fresh direction are temporary diversionary factors (or Cars, which allows Wilson to depart from the formula entirely) there are three or four Starsky and Hutches, Big Bounces or You, Me & Duprees to reveal how shopworn his bliseed-out stoner act has gotten.

Wilson truly is becoming a very annoying houseguest, and he's definitely overstayed his welcome. Time to polish up the act...or start packing.