Dude, Where's My Car?

Dude, Where's My Car?
December 15, 2000
Fox
Comedy, Sci-Fi
DVD
B-

In the sub-sub-genre of bonehead stoners saving the Earth/universe, I'd put this on a level with Spirit of '76 and slightly above Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.  The two dudes in this (the extremely typecast Ashton "Kelso" Kutcher and Sean William "Stifler" Scott) are actually more moronic than any buddies I've seen in any movies.  (Admittedly, I haven't seen Dumb & Dumber among other others.)  There's a scene that is like the most basic version of "Who's on First" you've ever heard, consisting as it does with the guys reading the tattoos on each other's backs, "Dude" and "Sweet," and then asking what their own tattoos say.  And there's a scene where Kutcher's character is enraged by the woman working the drive-through microphone at a Chinese fast-food place.  And then....

Anyway, it's stupid.  There's never really a sense that the film was made by or for anyone much brighter than the protagonists.  But I can't help it, I find the movie funny.  Maybe not as funny as I did almost 15 years ago, but obviously funny enough to get the DVD (with commentary no less).  And, yes, the movie is sci-fi.  Its convoluted and not completely resolved plot-- you never actually see the car tracked down-- involves two sets of aliens and a cult of bubble-wrapped geeks who want to be abducted.  It's tempting to analyze this film as a dream/nightmare of young white men, with their fears and desires about different genders and races all mixed together, with a special section on how instead of hugging each other and then calling each other "fag," as Bill and Ted did more than a decade earlier, Jesse and Chester nonchalantly beat Fabio and his girlfriend in a kissing contest.  But basically it's a stupid, kind of fun movie and I don't feel like spending that much time on it.

Geoffrey Gould, who was an Audience Member in In & Out, is a Cult Member here.  The actor known as Turtle, who plays Cult Member Jeff, would have an uncredited role as a Beatnik in Down With Love.  And Jennifer Garner would have a much serious role in Juno than she does here as one of the dudes' very much not identical twin girlfriends.

The movie that may have the longest title to be frequently dropped.