Dude, Where's My Car (2000)

Dude, Where's My Car? is nearly a good movie. The pacing is excellent and the jokes come quickly. The only problem is the lousy way the jokes are dished out.

Two stoners, who never actually smoke pot in the movie, wake up without any recollection of the previous night's events. As they sit in their living room watching Animal Planet a man walks out of a closet, pees on a plant, asks if he has any messages then walks back in the closet. It could have been a funny scene if only the director had any amount of comic flair. One joke I laughed at involved an old lady running one of the stoners over with her car. The director obviously thought it was funny as well because he repeated the gag 3 seconds later.

The two friends spend the rest of the day running into people who can't wait to tell them about everything they did the previous night. The list of people includes a hot blonde chick (Kristy Swanson), lots of strippers, including one that is actually a transvestite, who for an unmentioned reason trusted these two morons with a suitcase full of money. The plot is further muddled when a group of space loving nerds, two Nordic sounding space aliens, and a group of sexual pleasure offering alien babes all show up looking for a device that could destroy the entire galaxy. Can you guess who has it in their possession?

This movie quickly spins out of control. It sets up so many jokes but delivers on so few. By the time this movie comes to its letdown of an ending, I was wondering how good this movie may have been if only the director knew how to give a punch line as well as he sets up a joke.

Perhaps this movie will find an audience with drug users. There are several scenes where all we see on the screen are kaleidoscope images. Perhaps that looks cool when you're stoned. If you're not in your right mind, or high when you watch this movie you may find yourself laughing out loud. But all the sober members in the audience will just wish Mel Brooks in his heyday had directed this.

Yeah, this could have been much better. As Eric said it is swiftly paced and the jokes come rapid fire. If only more of them had been funny. Maybe a third of them are chuckle worthy and only a few truly guffaw inducing. I liked the rap video spoof around the pool. And the stoner take on Abbot and Costello’s “Who’s On First” routine was mildly clever. Jesse and Chester discover they have new tattoos on their backs. The dialogue goes like this, “What’s my tattoo?” “Sweet!” “What’s mine?” “Dude!” Repeat several times.

The camera certainly loves Ashton Kutcher. He has great charisma. He and Seann William Scott are appealing as the two adorable but clueless stoners. Their open mouth kiss in the car when they are trying to outdo Fabio and his girlfriend is hot.

This movie clocks in at just over 80 minutes. The story moves along fast enough that you don’t have time to think about what comes next. As Eric mentioned Jesse and Chester are never shown getting high, although there is a weed-smoking dog. In fact Jesse and Chester never even talk about getting high. They are definitely PG rated pot heads.

Dude, Where’s My Car is an amusing and innocuous little comedy with two likable lead characters and a silly plot. Oh and Eric, it is funnier when you’re high but I still wish Mel Brooks had directed it.

I'm not sure there are enough drugs in the world to make this movie funny for me. Oh sure, it's amusing occasionally. A couple of the jokes work, but overall this movie is just stupid and not in a good way. The only line I truly laughed at was when the one alien says, "We will now use the power of the Continuum Transfunctioner to banish you to Hoboken, New Jersey."

About the only thing it has going for it is the almost inexplicable likability of its two leads. Somehow Kutcher and Scott manage to make the two dumbest characters since Bill and Ted marginally entertaining and only a little irritating.

The more recent movie Hangover took the same premise as this movie (that of people waking up and not knowing what happened the night before) and made it very funny. Something that the writers of this movie should have considered doing.

I don't know if the audience was expected to be high, but I'm absolutely certain the writer must have been high when he wrote it. At least I hope he was. I'd hate to think that someone wrote this thing sober.