You, Me And Dupree Review

YOU, ME, AND DUPREE Review:

- The disappointing thing with this movie is that it has one of those premises that we've seen before, but pretty much always has good potential for comedy despite how many times the same exact setup has been used. It's simple - three is a crowd, and therefore hilarity ensues. In this case, the Third Man is Owen Wilson, basically just doing a lot of Owen Wilson-y schtick. Funny in theory, but this is not really the quirky Owen Wilson character that was so funny in Meet the Parents or The Life Aquatic. What made Wilson so funny in many of his other movies is that you can't quite pinpoint where he's coming from. He looks like a stoned surfer dude, but he has this kind of cockiness as well, a real blue-blood type snobbery, almost. Usually, Owen Wilson plays some of the more complex comedic characters out there, which is why I've become a big fan of his over the years - I mean, I legitimately was a big fan of Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights, for crying out loud. How many people can say THAT? But, unfortunately, what we get here is total, cookie-cutter Owen Wilson as Hollywood's idea of Funny Man. Take one part of Owen's trademark stoned mock-sincerity as was so popular in the overrated Wedding Crashers, one dash of standard, Hollywood WACKINESS (TM Jim Carrey, TM Will Ferell), mix together and let the hijinks ensue. So yeah, You, Me, and Dupree never amounts to a movie where the actor's uniqueness shapes the movie into something great and hilarious, like, say, the similarly-themed What About Bob. Instead, this is a case of the actor struggling to retain his integrity and uniqueness while doing a pretty paint by numbers movie (think Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty).

There are moments that are definitely funny. The entire climactic sequence with Owen as Dupree "blowing seven kinds of smoke" in order to create a distraction for his pal Matt Dillon is pretty hilarious. And there's a few other random moments that definitely bring the funny. But overall, we have an uneven mix of Owen Wilson shennanigans coupled with a totally bland couple of Matt Dillon and Kate Hudson, and an embarrasingly lame performance by Michael Douglass. Douglass tries his best to channel the inspired serious-guy-does-comedy stylings of Robert DeNiro in Meet the Parents, but let's face it, Michael Douglass is no DeNiro, in drama or comedy. His character here is just straining for laughs, and we, like him, become very uncomfortable whenever he's on screen.

But back to Dillon and Hudson as our main newlywedded couple. Yikes, talk about unlikable. Dillon for some reason plays his character here like he's the freaking Punisher or something, practically growling out his lines and looking at all times like he's about to pop a cap in somebody. In one scene he just unironically calls Owen Wilson a "homo." Okay ...

Hudson also is pretty stiff in this movie, partly because it's how her character is written. But she is just a typical stereotype here - the stern, good head on her shoulders wife who still has a soft spot for her husbands' goofy friend. So yeah, basically she is playing Wilma Flintstone. Nice.

Even Seth Rogen, so good in Freaks and Geeks, 40 Year Old Virgin, etc, is reduced to a lame role that is a combo of a few different sitcom characters we've all seen about 5 billion times. Like everything else in the movie, very paint-by-numbers.

Like I said, it's funny at times, but the two or three memorable lines get drowned out by the other two hours or so of derivative blandness. This movie never really takes things far enough, never pushes the envelope. Owen Wilson's character never does anything THAT bad, except burn down the house, but hey I saw Steve Urkel do that on Family Matters like 15 years ago. Give me something new here. Anything.

And, P.S. - those radio commercials really were annoying.

My Grade: C