“Sigh,” I thought, “Another ‘romantic’ comedy that simply plays on the age-old bullshit stereotypical differences between men and women, and is about a couple desperately trying to preserve their relationship when it’s obvious they simply don’t like each other. It’s A Guy Thing (Kate Hudson no Julia Stiles) My Boss’ Daughter (Michael Douglas no Terence Stamp) and Wedding Crashers (Matt Dillon no Vince Vaughn … jeez, did I just say that?) mashed together minus any semblance of a likable character. I can actually imagine the script reading differently, but Kate Hudson’s character comes off like she always expects the worst from people (seriously the more I see this girl in other stuff, the more I realise how fantastic a director Cameron Crowe must be, like I didn’t know already, to bring Penny Lane out of her), Matt Dillon’s, once you lift the lid, is just a beer swillin’ fisticuffs jock, and Dupree himself … well, Dupree is Dupree – the closest to likable character in the movie, but still an annoying, clingy jerk. So, yeh, caricatures rather than characters. Maybe it was intended. It doesn’t work for me.”

But, to be honest, as I said to Sarah during the first 20 minutes, I feel sorta dirty ‘cos I did laugh more than once, sometimes pretty loud. Owen Wilson is Owen Wilson as Dupree is Dupree and he’s one of the few comedy performers I can get along with these days. The sequence in which he “rescues” the whole thing reminded me a lot of how Stifler puts things right in American Wedding. It’s corny, but it’s sweet. Hey, has anyone ever coined the phrase “sweetcorn cinema”?

Good god, Miami Vice has broken me. I should be raining hellfire on this movie but I’m calling it sweet?

No, really, though most of the movie is pretty poor, the ending sort of surprised me how much I believed it. It’s not great but it’s nowhere near as awful as I expected, even wanted, it to be.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 23rd, 2006 at 3:48 am in 3 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.