You, Me and Dupree

Caught up with this light buddy/romance romp from 2006 on HBO the other night; actually it was pretty close to chick flick territory except for Owen (‘I’m the blonde one’) Wilson’s whack job of a best friend character. Plot is fairly basic: In a beautiful ceremony on a beach in Hawaii, Carl (Matt Dillon) marries Molly (Kate Hudson) with Dupree (Wilson) as best man and the whole fancy thing paid for by Molly’s real estate mogul dad (Michael Douglas), who also happens to be Carl’s boss.

Dupree loses his job, girlfriend and apartment on returning from Hawaii and the newlyweds reluctantly put him up, until he nearly burns their place to the ground in a buttery sexual encounter. Dad also is not happy about the marriage as Mom died several years earlier and Kate is (in a non-sexual way) the primary object of his affections, so he tries to break up the marriage albeit in ways that his darling daughter won’t see and some that may be subtle enough that even Cal won’t recognize them for what they are.

You, Me and Dupree is a romantic comedy at its core, though, and so the chicanery is played for laughs and ultimately fails, with Dad realizing Kate will always be his daughter (of course). But writer Michael LeSieur (this is his only IMDB credit) and directors Joe and Anthony Russo give us enough laughs and slippery story twists to make the hour and 45 minutes entertaining despite the predictable end. Most of them come from Wilson’s character, who despite being in his mid 30s is still utterly naive and child-like. Seth Rogen, who was pretty good in 40 Year Old Virgin and apparently even more so in Knocked Up, is mostly wasted here as the third buddy in Carl and Dupree’s clique.

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