Review of
Dude, Where's My Car?
Reviewed by Angela Gamez
Director: Danny Leiner
Starring: Ashton Kutcher,Seann William Scott,Kristy Swanson,Jennifer Garner,Marla Sokoloff
I have nothing positive to say about this film. I laughed MAYBE a half-dozen
times during its run; that is how infrequent the moments of successful material
are in this agonizingly unfunny and immature comedy. It is as if director Danny
Leiner tried to duplicate Dumb and Dumber for Generation Y. One missing
factor for success: Jim Carrey. Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott lack the
liveliness and comic skill to carry this brainless movie to box office triumph.
In case you are unaware, Dude, Where's My Car? gets its title from the
fact that the two main characters spend the whole film looking for a stupid car,
and their language is restricted to two words: “dude” and “sweet.”
To the degree that there is a story, it goes a little something like this...
Jesse (Ashton Kutcher) and Chester (Seann William Scott) are stoners who wake up
one morning and can't remember what happened the previous night. According to
observers and eyewitnesses, the two were waving money around like it grew on a
tree in their back yard, they somehow got a hot girl (played by Kristy Swanson)
to take her top off, ended up buying doughnuts for the entire police department,
spent some time with a transsexual in a strip bar, trashed their girlfriends'
house, and misplaced Jesse's car. Now, Jesse and Chester have to find the car
before they are captured by an assembly of cultists who are convinced that these
two idiots have a mechanism that will provide them with the means to journey
outside the solar system.
Dude, Where's My Car? is a one-joke flick, and that one joke quickly
grows old. The movie steals freely from numerous movies, including the recent
and raunchy American Pie, as well as Road Trip. American Pie and
Road Trip are likely to be the reasons that Dude even exists. But, as
an alternative to the no-holds-barred attitude of those films, Dude turns
sex into the dirty little secret you giggled about in elementary school.
The only way to enjoy this movie is to drink and/or inhale enough of one or
more controlled substances (like Jesse and Chester) so that, upon waking up the
following morning, you’ll have forgotten that you spent money to sit through
this crap.
