#40 Dude, Where's My Car?

Comedy! It’s great, I love slapstick, I love standup, I love visual gags, I love witty dialogue, I love sarcasm, oh boy do I love sarcasm and I love ranting about things that don’t matter. Comedy! What I don’t like is Dude, where’s my car?

Dude, where’s my car came out in 2000 and was greatly successful, earning $73m on only a $13m budget. There were actually talks about a sequel but the scripts were ultimately shot down by Ashton Kutcher, he had such greats as Texas Rangers to be in, what a success that was.

But seriously, this movie was panned by critics at its time, with an 18% rotten tomatoes and a 30 on metacritic but in recent years, and partially thanks to multiple airings on television, it’s gained a bit of a cult following. But don’t think I’m being fooled, I’m going to tear this movie a new one, let’s dive in.

We start with

  

You’re not fooling anyone with that. So after the opening credits featuring dancing in space, because… also, an animated atrocity, should I call Mr Enter on this?

We really open with an alarm clock and we get freeze screens introducing our main characters, Jesse and Chester and I’m going to put £2 in the jar now because these two are morons throughout the entire movie. This comedy shtick only works when you have someone to work off of. You need a straight man to react to the stupidity. Being stupid in itself is not funny.

So they’ve woken up, presumably after a hard night’s drinking and have no clue what happened last night. They find a stranger named Gene in the house, who’s peeing on a plant because joke? They remember their girlfriends had a party last night and assume they were there because they’d be bad boyfriends otherwise. They go to fridge to find it full of pudding. This is what passes as a plot point.

They gorge on the pudding and find an answering machine message from their girlfriends. They showed up with a bunch of people last night and their house is totally trashed. Do these twins live together? That’s nice… kinda weird since I don’t recall their parents being in the movie. Anyway, they remind them it’s their anniversary and if they don’t have their gifts they won’t get their ‘treats.’ Because these two are horny they presume its sex.

They did buy them gifts and left them in the car. A man knocks on their door, a Mr Pizzacoli, who runs a Pizza joint. Hitting it a little on the nose there, aren’t movie? Like with a mallet? They left work with 30 pizzas and they weren’t delivered. That is embezzlement, have them arrested. You want proof, just look up at the f*cking ceiling, they have Pizza.

Of course he’s also an idiot, so he just lets them off with a warning whilst falling for such clever ploys as “Look, a unicorn!”

So, he leaves and the two go out only to find the car is gone, and we get a title drop, 6 TIMES IN A ROW. These two want to do an Abbott and Costello routine so badly, they’ll outright copy one later. After 2 more title drops (seriously, this joke wasn’t funny the first time, move on) they need to retrace their steps. They get sick of walking after 3 steps and spot a sweet old lady called Mrs Crabblemen. She’s going to run him over. How do I know this? She literally has the word Crab in her name? The closest thing you have to a funny joke thus far and you ruin it by giving away the punchline!

After a repeat of the same joke, they speak to a friend of theirs named Nelson, who speaks like Yoda because comedy! The joke is the dog is a stoner, you know gags involving animals rarely work outside of cartoons. It’s only if the animal causes someone to suffer that it ever works. Here, it’s just weird and disturbing.

They head to a Chinese restaurant for one joke. The woman at the Chinese restaurant keeps asking “and then” to our protagonists,’ well, Jesse’s mostly, continued annoyance. Now this is a set up for a good joke if Jesse’s reaction becomes more and more extreme to the point of being comically disproportionate, but they ruin by implying the person is deliberately trying to get a response. So he smashes up the box, good luck for your appearance in court, probably not your first and Nelson departs for a reason that may or may not have happened off screen. Comedy!

They see a woman named Christie Boner. I’m not even kidding, that’s her actual name. Who naturally makes their penis erect because joke. She comes over, waves and says she had a good time with them last night. She was in their car briefly and we find out they had a suitcase full of money. OK… So some jocks come around, the leader of whom is apparently Christie’s boyfriend. They dump trash on them and warn them if they come around Christie again it’s “stoner bashing time” could we skip ahead to that please, I wouldn’t mind seeing these two morons in pain. Might actually get a laugh.

They ponder what they’d do with a suitcase full of money, and they decide to head to the kitty cat club, a bright pink club. These two are straight, right? Inside it’s all lap-dancing and gratuitous fan-service, in the middle of the day with a very small audience! It’s confirmed that they were here when everyone cheers for them for some reason. They’re approached by a ‘woman’ named Tania. Don’t tell me, the joke is she has a dick.

She takes Jesse backstage for a ‘special lapdance’ leaving Chester to Lapdance with, well, everyone else. Inside the bathroom she calls herself a ‘genderly challenged male’ and shows off her penis. Told you. And thank you, movie. I’m sure transgender people across the world applaud you exploiting them for a cheap joke! Oh and apparently it was her money in that briefcase.

Apparently the suitcase was full of stolen money Tania tasked them with smuggling out but they never met to drop it off. Jesse says the money is in his car and she tells him to get it, fast. They decide to leave. The last place they remember being last night was at their girlfriends’ house but they can’t approach without anniversary gifts so use their $1.39 to buy… A box of chocolates? You couldn’t buy a happy meal with $1.39 let alone a box of chocolates. And apparently they ate the dark ones, the only ones they actually like.

OK, looking at the utter mess that they’ve created, and considering the depravity of the situation, telling the truth about the lost car might be the best option right now. Instead they offer to take out the trash and ultimately cause even more of a mess (through being complete and utter morons) making their girlfriends angry and chuck them out.

Oh for god’s sake. Tell them the f*cking truth. Your girlfriends are not idiots; they’ll believe that you lost your car whilst out drunk… Oh you’re creating unnecessary conflicts for later. F*ck this movie. Just as they’re tossed out, they’re dragged into a car by the nerd party that I’m calling the “followers of Zoltan” because I can’t be bothered to list off all their names, except Jeff, he’s cool. They’ve been sent to find a device called ‘the continuum transfunctioner.’ It is by the movie’s own words, a plot mcguffin. It was apparently in possession of the two losers last night and danger follows it.

So they drop off the two f*ckwits right outside a tailor who’s made special suits for them… They take off their shirts and find they have tattoos. Jesse’s says “Dude” and Chester’s says “Sweet” and we get the blatant Abbott and Costello ripoff I mentioned. Thankfully the tailor puts an end to this before it gets more annoying. What are these tailor made suits?

Blatant Adidas product placement, I’d like to know how much they paid for that. They were already paid for but held back to make minor alterations and adding extra pockets. Inside which (???) they find a kaleidoscope, a dove, a rubiks cube, some cell-phones and some receipts that say they bought a lot of other stuff. Time for a montage with a cr*ppy rap number. Comedy! Oh and don’t forget about the fan service.

They’re approached by women in leather, who promise erotic pleasure, in exchange for the continuum transfunctioner. OK, when did this plot become so complicated? The transgender stripper arrives and demands her money but the police show up and arrest the two. Apparently their car was spotted leaving a major drug deal last night.

The bad cop prepares to tortures a plastic dummy to get them to talk. Please just torture them instead. (Un)Fortunately, a cop bursts in and tells them they were buying donuts for the entire precinct at that time. And this didn’t raise any alarm bells whatsoever. It was a mixup and the real culprits look nothing like them because…

That one’s for the dummy cops, all of them. Next cop accidentally sends the car to the impound because joke.

Meanwhile the leather barbies (that’s what I’m calling them now) arrive at the pizzeria, where they’re directed to the jocks. They make the same offer to the jocks and off course they accept. And they realise where the two might’ve gone. A sportsday-esque event at a school for the blind, which the twins are involved with… I don’t have words for this. OK, we get two blind people jokes. One is a crotch shot, lovely, and the second is sexual assault. COMEDY!!

The twins go over to investigate and of course this more building up conflict, as the girls think they’re love rivals… Right… So, they phone Reggie who’s just been confronted by the Jocks, but the dog has things under control. So two Schwarzenegger knockoffs show up… just go with it… and say the continuum transfunctioner… I’m just gonna call it the macguffin. The macguffin is all that stands between Earth and very violent destruction. Yeah… I was hoping for the non-violent kind of destruction.

They say they don’t have it and ‘screw the universe’ and decide to head home. Where they’re confronted by their girlfriends about the sluts and for god’s sake, tell them the truth, they may not believe it but it’s worth a shot. So they dump their asses and leave. I feel no sympathy for them, and they don’t for themselves either. And they vow to change, find the car in the impound and rescue the presents and beg for their girlfriend’s forgiveness.

So, it turns out their car was tagged for auction and sold, that was f*cking quick. She knows where it was sold but she can’t tell them because of a code. So we begin an awkward montage of Chester reaching for and trying to get the address out whilst the others’ backs are turned. It’s not funny. Moving on, they drop the Schwarzenegger knockoffs at the Chinese so we can have a rebuttal of that joke later as the two are tased in their car by Jeff and the followers of Zoltan… yeah, I’ll call them the space nerds now. 

They wake up, stripped to their underwear because joke and are put back in clothes that aren’t product placement. They’re lead to the ‘big house’ which is a barn and not the actual big house, which belongs to Zoltan’s parents. We then get a miming gag which isn’t funny as they knock out their captors and put on their ‘interstellar jumpsuits’ which is basically bubble wrap because joke.

Zoltan makes a speech about them finally getting to go into outer space or something.  As Jesse and Chester are ratted out. Turns out the nerds have kidnapped their girlfriends and will kill them unless they get back the macguffin. Basically, they need to find their car, which is what they were doing anyway until you interrupted... So glad to see this scene was entirely unnecessary.

So, the car was sold to someone who clearly does not like visitors, is castration legal in the US? I think this guy should be in prison, not buying from a prison compound. They head in anyway and are very loud and irritating, business as usual. They are confronted by an ostrich, ok… and there’s another 2 behind them, and now there’s 3 in front of them. They take shelter in the car but it proves ineffective and they’re knocked out.

They wake up in a cage with a guy named Mark, who’s been in there for over 3 years, someone call the police. The guy who captured them, is a French stereotype. So transgender persons, women in general, homosexuals and common decency, now the French, is the anyone you won’t offend? Anyway, because plot fart he decides to ask them a question, and will release them if they get it right. Thanks to Chester watching animal planet in 2 scenes, they get it right and are set free to get things from the car. Except it was stolen… But he did find a key for a locker at the space-o-rama.

They’re confronted by the transgender stripper and her transgender boyfriend. They open the locker and find the briefcase with presumably only most of the money but enough to satisfy them. They also find a tonne of tickets, a crazy straw, a prank jellybean thing and noticeably no presents for their girlfriends yet. They can’t find the macguffin but since they don’t know what it looks like, they lie and say they’ve found it, alerting both the space nerds and the jocks. The jocks arrive and beat the nerds to recover the macguffin but the Schwarzenegger knockoffs arrive and alert them to it being fake, a prize won by everyone. The crazy straw would’ve been a better sub

Chester completes his Rubik’s cube and reveals that is the macguffin, it activates with the end of the countdown destroying the universe. The Schwarzenegger knockoffs claim they lost the macguffin after crashing on Earth thanks to the Leather Barbies, the duo verify this thanks to the pudding being a free prize on mini-golf and the knockoffs disarm it. The leather barbies morph into a giant space bitch and the macguffin heads back into the hands of the two f*ckups, thanks to a monkey using a stick they use the laser in the thing to shoot her, destroying her. This kind of sh*t seems straight out of kids sitcom, this was aimed at adults right.

So the Schwarzenegger knockoffs remove everyone’s memory of last night, next day opens like the last but this time they find their car, give the girls their necklaces and get berres as a ‘treat’ right… The girls also get necklaces to enlargen their breasts because we couldn’t end without one last sexist joke. And we get a repeat of the Abbot and Costello knockoff to close us out.

So that was Dude, where’s my car? And it’s a flippin mess

This feels like a sitcom plot extended to feature length in that there’s tonnes of padding that’s completely unnecessary, a lot of the forced conflicts could’ve been cut out of the plot entirely and it wouldn’t have made a difference. But it also suffers from another problem, the story is far too complicated for its own good. Keep the story simple and your efforts can be focused on making jokes and developing character. Here the jokes aren’t funny and the plot becomes harder and harder to follow.

Then we come to characters, Jesse and Chester are a pair of bumbling, pot-smoking, womanising, cash-smuggling, thieving morons. And these are the guys we’re supposed to be rooting for? The most likeable character of the bunch is the pot-smoking dog. The girlfriends are obstacles, the jocks are jocks, the space-nerds are morons, the villainy of the Leather Barbies is obvious, the Schwarzenegger knockoffs are walking punchlines, the police are idiots and everyone else is annoying – can you see why I say this is too complicated.

I wouldn’t usually harper on this point, but the portrayal of women in this movie is disgusting. Whether it’s being an actual prostitute, panty shots, having the surname ‘Boner,’ continually declaring yourselves ‘hot chicks with large breasts’ or the breast enhancing necklaces at the end, this movie feels like someone’s masturbation material. 

THIS MOVIE GIVES MY RAGE ISSUES!

Rating: 210%

Images/clips used are from Dude, Where's my Car?. All images in this review are subject to fair use

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