| Written by Movie Club,
on 11-08-2000 08:00
|
Published in : Reviews, Movies |
 Shankster
I have two types of reviews that I write, a glowing one with a little bit of analysis for a thoroughly enjoyable movie or a ripping one that just tears apart a crappy movie and lets me rant about how awful it was. Dude, Where's My Car? definitely doesn't fall into the first category and it truly isn't worth my time or energy to tear it apart. I wasted an hour and a half of my life watching this monstrosity I don't want to spend another fifteen or twenty minutes reviewing it. It sucked, it wasn't funny, and I wouldn't recommend anyone else spending their money.
Batman
You know that a movie has reached a truly high level of badness when the least insulting thing I can say about this comedy is that it's not funny. There are a couple laughs sprinkled over the flick but in general it provoked so little reaction from the audience that I would have sworn I could hear crickets in the background.
There is a theory that you can't repeat a gag more than three times. At that point no matter how funny it was the first time, it will actually begin to irritate the audience. This movie (and I use that term loosely here) routinely took gags that failed to get laughs the first time and repeated them upwards of three trillion times. It felt like the director thought if he kept repeating the joke, eventually around the three thousandth time the audience would finally pick up on the subtle nuances of someone saying "And then?" and emit a chuckle.
The real problem is that this movie is caught in the PG-13 purgatory that has trapped so many movies this year. The idea is that you make a movie that carefully skates the line between the box-office friendly PG-13 rating and the less financially viable R rating. That way you can sell a raunchy movie that all the kids can go see. And Hollywood wonders why Congress keeps yelling at them. This approach to moviemaking tends to leave the flick a bit impotent. I'm talking in generalities here because a whole crate of Viagra couldn't make this flick stand on its own. But at least if it had gone for the R rating it could have cut loose a little and maybe found some entertainment value.
Think of it this way, if Cheech and Chong's movies tried to cover up the fact that they smoked pot, would they be any good? No, of course not. It wouldn't make any sense. Dude, Where's My Car? is about a couple of stoners but the only reason we know they are stoners and not just idiots is that another guy calls them stoners. At no point in the movie do we see either of the two stars having a drink or using drugs. We see a dog smoke some pot but that's it. That's the problem, it's just all talk and no action. We get endless scenes of blank stupified stares and repeated gags.
The story is mind numbing. It would have had a hard time of it by simply being a movie about two idiot stoners looking for their car. But for some reason there is also a tacked on sub-plot about aliens and some sort of device. It doesn't make any sense and leads to an ending (to call it a climax would be insulting) that has easily the worst special effects in a studio film in years. I'm still stunned that some studio exec at Fox read this script and thought "I must bring this story to the people." I take that back. I'm stunned that anyone read this script all the way through. There is no way that could have happened and still have this movie made.
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