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The “You” in You, Me and Dupree
is Molly, played by Kate Hudson, a
cuddly, infinitely patient and loving
elementary-school teacher.
The “Me” is her new husband Carl, played
by Matt Dillon, a residential property
designer who works for Molly’s
passive-aggressively bullying father
(Michael Douglas).
Days after Carl and Molly return from
their honeymoon, Carl’s beloved,
irresponsible best friend Randy Dupree,
who’s suddenly unemployed and homeless,
moves in with them. Dupree is played by
Owen Wilson.
For better or worse, Wilson appears to
be a true original among movie stars.
There’s no comedy star quite like
him—the golden-boy looks, textured by
the broken nose, are offset by the high,
nasal voice with its unhurried, twangy
diction and its insistent undercurrent
of defensive wheedling.
His routines derive from his unflappable
sincerity, a gentle, approval-seeking
gush that pre-emptively turneth away
wrath. Like Bill Murray, he’s a hustler,
but where Murray uses hipster’s guile,
Wilson hustles his costars, and us, with
his dizzy guilelessness.
The role of Dupree in You, Me and
Dupree is tailored to this persona,
and Wilson’s inappropriate yet somehow
inoffensive antics keep the film
chugging along, despite its sluggish,
awkward plot, and the blandness of
almost everyone else onscreen with him.
Dillon, who has shown a fine talent for
deadpan comedy in the past—he’s even
been brilliant at least once, in Gus Van
Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy—seems to
have put his personality in storage for
this movie. Probably he thought the
wisest move here was simply to back off
and play straight man to Wilson’s
antics, but there’s a difference between
a straight man and an invisible man.
Kate Hudson is a little more noticeable,
and not only because she’s shown as
often as possible in skimpy underwear
and bathing suits—she’s also got her
usual smiling sweetness and warmth, even
in the face of Dupree’s unsavory
imposition, and she connects with the
audience.
But the character of Molly doesn’t have
any depth. She’s nice—improbably nice,
considering that her father seems like a
predatory creep (the same predatory
creep that Douglas has been playing
regularly since Wall Street)—but
she’s not particularly interesting.
That pretty much sums up the movie, too.
Thanks to Wilson, it’s a little better
to sit through than it looks like it
would be from the TV commercials, but
that’s not exactly high praise. The
theme—the effect that marriage
inevitably has on male friendships—is a
venerable one, and from time to time
Wilson brings the film to psychological
life.
But the directors, brothers Joe and
Anthony Russo, working from a script by
Mike LeSieur, keep pushing it back into
flat, contrived slapstick.
Of course, if a movie, even a comedy,
were to portray this premise too
realistically, it would be probably have
to be a lot darker and more painful than
You, Me and Dupree has the
slightest intention of being. But even
in the context of a sunny, silly summer
comedy, Owen Wilson’s goofy energy
deserved a little less short-circuiting.
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