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You, Me, and Dupree

If I had to guess, I’d say that You, Me and Dupree was written as a vehicle for Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, but Stiller turned it down on the grounds that it’s the same movie he’s already made a hundred times. At which point the studio substituted the first available actor with dark enough hair to provide a visual contrast with Wilson and proceeded.

Given the low quality of the comedies Stiller has accepted, you can imagine how bad something he (I’m guessing) chose to turn down must be. Matt Dillon made the unwise decision to take the role of Carl Peterson, newly married to Molly (Kate Hudson) and working for her father (Michael Douglas), a real estate developer who clearly has issues about losing his only daughter: He asks Carl to hyphenate his name and get a vasectomy. Worse, he makes his work life hell. So Carl’s already in a poor frame of mind when his best friend Dupree (Wilson) loses his job and his apartment and moves in with them for a “temporary” stay. Of course, the visit drags out, and Dupree’s slacker ways (which include casual attitudes toward nudity, bathroom etiquette and other things most of us do in private) begin to drive a wedge between Carl and Molly that exacerbates his already tenuous work situation.

You, Me and Dupree is a comedy of embarrassment built around the kind of misunderstandings that real people settle with a few minutes of reasonable talk. Undemanding fans of Wilson who want to see him run through the same goofball schtick he can do in his sleep can watch him do just that; ditto those who want to see Hudson prance around in skimpy underwear and not tax her thespic skills any.