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Dude Where's My Car?... |
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Director: Danny Leiner
Writer: Phillip Stark
Producers: B. Johnson, A. Kosove, W. Allan Rice
Actors: Ashton Kutcher as Jesse, Seann William Scott as Chester, Kristy
Swanson as Christie Boner
Genre: Comedy
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PLOT:
The misadventures of a couple of idiot potheads.
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REVIEW:
Dude, this movie is made specifically for one type of audience: 15 to 25-year old male
horndogs who enjoy getting wasted or stoned every now and again. Not many other people
will "get" it. In fact, if you are not part of that target audience, I doubt
that you will either enjoy or appreciate this movie's complete |
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nuttiness. Mind you, I'm not part of that target group, but since those days
weren't that far off for me (or are they still around?), the film's complete over-the-top
goofiness worked for me just the same. The movie doesn't take itself seriously, it doesn't
pretend to be about anything more than a couple of stoners running around and getting into
strange and funny adventures and it features plenty of cleavage. Sound interesting to you?
To many, it won't. To others, it will. Halfway through the relentlessly idiotic but |
moderately entertaining teen comedy "Dude,
Where's My Car?," you can almost imagine the film's director, megaphone in hand,
screaming at the crew: "Bring on the dancing elephants!"
Acting more like a demented ringmaster than a filmmaker, director Danny Leiner has, using
a chaotic screenplay by Philip Stark, turned this picture into a pastiche of such
psychedelic proportions that his continuous efforts to evoke laughter through the wackiest
and silliest of situations |
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begin to feel downright desperate. The movie begins with a simple enough
"high concept": two pot-loving, ambition-free and sexually obsessed best
buddies-roommates in their late teens or early 20s (Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott
of "American Pie") wake up one morning to find themselves in a surreal scenario
and realize that they have no recollection of the events of the last 12 hours.
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Soon enough, the two find out that their car has
disappeared. And through an angry phone call, they also learn that the previous night
involved thoroughly trashing their girlfriends' home. The pair's objective, then, is to
find out exactly what happened during this intense night of partying, and to get hold of
their car so that they can visit their girlfriends, offer them anniversary presents and
get some much coveted" special treats" in return. Such an absurd crusade, which
takes place in the average American city where the protagonists live, would be easy enough
if it weren't for the Fellini-esque cast of characters they encounter |
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along the way: a transsexual stripper demanding a suitcase full of money
that our heroes allegedly borrowed from him/her; a wannabe Zen master and his stoned dog;
a gang of neighborhood bullies; a bunch of alien invaders from another planet; and a herd
of wild ostriches.
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"Dude, Where's My Car?" leaves you with a reassuring view of today's
adolescents. Sure, the film's protagonists have the attention span of a mouse and inhabit
an ultimately sad universe devoid of commodities such as books, high aspirations, or, more
important, a sense of purpose.
But even during those politically incorrect moments when the picture finds laughter at the
expense of blind children or homosexuals, there's a benign, peace-loving air about it all
that forces you to accept and embrace the film's two central characters. Just as in
"Wayne's World," a film that is clearly a constant point of reference here, the
core of the story has less to do with the loosely connected scenes at hand than with the
undying friendship that motivates these two wide-eyed characters.
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