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starring Ashton Kutcher, Seann William Scott, Kristy Swanson, Jennifer Garner
screenplay by Philip Stark
directed by Danny Leiner
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Anyone who cares about film doesn't need me to warn him or her away from Dude, Where's My Car?, and anyone who doesn't probably wouldn't listen to me, anyway. But for what it's worth, here's the skinny: Jesse (Ashton Kutcher) and Chester (Seann William Scott) are a pair of stoners living in what appears to be sunny California. Recently, they have managed to get themselves in a bit of a fix: After a night of intense partying, they find that they cannot remember what happened the day before. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that Jesse's car, on which their addled lives depend, has mysteriously vanished–presumably in the massive frolic mentioned earlier. Thing is, today is their anniversary with their girlfriends (The Twins), their gifts are in their car, and they trashed the Twins' house in the previous night's revelries to begin with, making it necessary to get back in their good books. And so they must ask, "Dude, Where's My Car?"
Now, all it would have taken to make this work is a little wit–just a little–and a flair for elaborate set-pieces that escalate as the movie progresses. Unfortunately, the filmmakers' frame of reference is so stunted that Dude, Where's My Car? might as well have taken place in a cardboard box. As Jesse and Chester wander hither and yon in search of their vehicle, the clues to the search magically appear in front of them: here a beautiful woman praises Jesse's antics in the backseat of said car, while a strange nerd cult devoted to a mysterious being named Zoltan (Hal Sparks) seeks the interstellar device that threatens the universe, and which is also located in the missing automobile.
And did I mention the transsexual stripper (Teressa Tunney) to whom the boys owe $200,000? Or the self-described "hot chicks" from beyond who also seek the interstellar device, which is at the same time being pursued by a pair of buff guys with Swedish accents? The obvious attempts at campy non-sequiturs are hampered by the inability to reference anything beyond some very tired science-fiction clichés, and so the wildness of the plot doesn't push any buttons. Watching it is like being told the same joke over and over again in the hopes that you'll get it, when you got it the first time and it wasn't funny then, either.
Not only is the film strained at the level of invention, but its sexuality is also arrested somewhere around the age of thirteen. Dude, Where's My Car? rings all of the old bells of male pubescent fear and desire, ranging from the merely horny (Jesse and Chester want to get laid) to the downright scary (the villainous space women who seek the device); one gets the feeling that it exists to assuage the terror experienced by boys with hormones at cross-purposes. Indeed, the whole film seems to take the straight male body and watch it drift perilously close to the edge of gender confusion, where all sorts of terrors befall it. We are encouraged to run in fear of the baritone-voiced transsexual stripper, who suggests the horror of penetration disguised as a woman, and the buxom space women, so sexually aggressive they must somehow be put down. It should come as no surprise that the film's climax involves a 50ft. man-eating woman. So mortified is Dude, Where's My Car? by the aggressive feminine that it embodies it in a monstrous threat that must be defeated. I have nothing against kids engaging in a little harmless vulgarity, but in this day and age, does it really need to be this mean?
That's, of course, the icing on the cake: the film's "offensive" humour is really a last-ditch attempt to spice up a feeble script, which thinks that people walking around dressed in bubblewrap is a hilarious visual joke. The film is so ramshackle as to be entirely unhinged; its one-liners and gimmicks don't seem to fit together, and the air of forced merriment seems to be cuing the audience for laughs that aren't really there, a series of slapdash blackout sketches that don't really stick. This wouldn't be a problem if it could have somehow linked its disconnected schtick. Monty Python and MAD MAGAZINE triumphed at this, taking their crazy quilts of Dada jokes and letting them bleed into each other, creating an aesthetic continuum that united the disparate styles under one rule of madness. But poor Dude, Where's My Car? seems to think that it's a normal film with a plot, meaning that even its laboured wackiness ultimately get an undeserved shaft.
One wonders what the story meetings were like on this thing. Could there really have been a bunch of people in a room discussing how to improve on the scene where the boys are attacked by ostriches, or the character of the roommate who urinates on the houseplants? Did they have to carefully hone the breast jokes and the mention of bodily fluids, demanding that high plateau of excellence that the project clearly warranted? I can't imagine that they spent as much time on it as I did on this review, which has already wasted too many words on a subject that doesn't deserve them.
So let's recap: If you're 13 and male, you may get a kick out of this cinematic form of playing hooky. Everyone else is advised to stay away. You probably knew that I was going to say that, and depending on who you are, you either didn't need the warning or wouldn't have heeded it regardless. Originally published: December 19, 2000.
THE DVD
by Bill Chambers Où est ma voiture, Dude? begs the question: when is a PG-13 movie not a PG-13 movie? The answer is, of course: on DVD. Here's a movie that was cut within an inch of its life to avoid the R-rating, only to wind up with a profane commentary and a special section devoted to seven censored scenes as they originally played out. There's something broken about America, these deletions show. Jackyl the pot-smoking dog takes a hit from a pipe and his exhale was removed; alien babes offer to trade sex for a "transfunctioner," but it's no longer oral sex; and so on.
This Fox DVD release confirms many suspicions. It demonstrates the hypocrisy of the MPAA for regarding content above objective and tone (in the case of Dude, Where's My Car?, after trims you're still left with a pro-drug, pro-alcohol, pro-sitting-around-doing-nothing-with-your-life piece of shit), and it shows the lack of integrity (I know you're laughing, but…), artistic and otherwise, among studios in these puritanical times: Adhering to the myth that PG-13 automatically begets a wider theatrical audience and fearing the wrath of out-of-touch senators, they wait until the watchdogs have fallen asleep before releasing a restored or appended version to video stores.
I don't know whom I'd like to bitchslap more: Joseph Lieberman, Jack Valenti, the head of every major film company, or Danny Leiner, the director of Dude, Where's My Car?. Leiner's yak-track, wherein he's joined by boozed-up co-stars Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott, is as inaccessible as they come, just a laugh-fest between friends who speak in shorthand, although one gleans, between guffaws and obscenities, important details like which female cast member they think is the hottest. (Actually, the most startling revelation is that Dude, Where's My Car? spent eight months in post-production.) A four-minute featurette showcases Kristy Swanson at her blondest; asked to describe her character, she says she "gives Jesse a boner." Five TV spots, a full-frame trailer, and a Grand Theft Auto video for a song called "Stoopid Ass" illuminate nothing, though the 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer of the film itself is technically accomplished (and immaculate when Jesse and Chester imagine themselves as hip-hop stars) and the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix gives seemingly "Malcolm in the Middle"-inspired scene transitions some speaker-panning swoosh while driving the (bad) music home.
83 minutes; PG-13; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1, English Dolby Surround; English, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Fox
