Dude, Where's My Car? is a 2000 comedy film directed by Danny Leiner.[1] It is about the journey of two young men (Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott) to find their stolen car.
The film received poor reviews from critics, but was a modest box-office success, and has managed to develop a cult following after its DVD and home video release.
The title of the film has become a benchmark of popular culture of the time of its release. It is referenced widely in many different situations, an example being Dude, Where's My Country?, the title of a political book by Michael Moore criticising post-9/11 America. The title may have originated from The Big Lebowski when The Dude's car is stolen and Donny asks him, "Dude, where's your car?"
Plot
Jesse (Ashton Kutcher) and Chester (Seann William Scott) awaken with hangovers and no memory of how they got there. The television is on, showing an Animal Planet[2] program about how animals use twigs and rocks as tools to get food. Their house is filled with containers of pudding, and the answering machine contains an angry message from their twin girlfriends Wilma (Marla Sokoloff) and Wanda (Jennifer Garner) as to their whereabouts. They emerge from their home to find Jesse's car missing, and with it their girlfriends' one-year anniversary presents. This prompts Jesse to ask the film's titular question: "Dude, where's my car?"
Because the girls have promised them a "special treat", which Jesse and Chester take to means sex, the men are desperate to retrieve their car. The duo begins retracing their steps in an attempt to discover just where they left the car. Along the way, they encounter a transgender stripper, a belligerent Chinese food drive-in restaurant speaker box operator (Freda Foh Shen), discover two appropriately-worded tattoos on each other's backs, run into UFO cultists led by Zoltan (Hal Sparks), a Cantonese-speaking Chinese tailor (Keone Young), the Zen-minded Nelson and his cannabis-loving dog, the aggressive jock Tommy and his friends, a couple of hard-nosed police detectives, and a reclusive ostrich farmer (Brent Spiner). The story continues as a buddy film, but takes on a few elements of science fiction when the protagonists meet two groups of aliens searching for the "Continuum Transfunctioner"; a device capable of destroying the universe.
Adding "save all of existence" to their list of tasks, Jesse and Chester trek onward. In an arcade, they discover that the Continuum Transfunctioner was a Rubik's Cube that Chester has been working hard to solve, and eventually does (thus activating it). Once the five lights had stopped flashing, the universe would be destroyed.
Jesse and Chester must determine which of two sets of aliens, a duo of Schwarzenegger-like men (with Norwegian accents) and a group of attractive women, is entitled to the device. One of the groups protects the universe, the other is there to destroy it. Both claim to be the protectors of the universe, state that they were with Jesse and Chester the previous night (which Jesse and Chester still cannot remember) and ask for the Transfunctioner. The two correctly choose the men, because when the men were asked what the two stoners did the night before, they correctly respond that the stoners got a hole in one at the 18th hole at a miniature golf park, and won a life time supply of pudding. At the last second, they deactivate the Transfunctioner, saving the universe.
Balked, the five alien women merge together to become a giantess (Jodi Ann Paterson) who swallows Tommy alive. The giantess then crawls out of the amusement centre and chases Jesse and Chester, almost stepping on a table at which a young boy is having a birthday party. The cultists tell them to activate the Photon Accelerator Annihilation Beam on the Transfunctioner. However, the button that activates it is too far in to reach. At the last second, Chester remembers the nature show with the tool-using chimps and uses a straw to push the recessed button, thus destroying the alien. The protectors erase everyone's minds concerning the events and time is reversed to the beginning of the film. The duo recover the car and salvage their relationships and discover the special treat from the girls turns out to be matching knitted caps and scarves. The protectors leave a gift for their girlfriends (and, indirectly, for the two young men): Breast Enhancement Necklaces.
Critical reception
Critical reception of the film was poor. The BBC Film review gave it 1 star, calling the direction "a lame-brained travesty" and "intensely irritating" and the film as a whole "painfully unamusing".[3] Rotten Tomatoes reports that 17% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on 52 reviews with the consensus that "the movie isn't funny".[4] The review aggregator Metacritic gave the film a score of 30, based on 17 reviews.[5] The Austin Chronicle concluded, "Dude, Your Movie Sucks". USA Today said: "Any civilization that can produce a movie this stupid probably deserves to be hit by famine and pestilence." The Chicago Tribune said: "At the end of 83 unmerciful minutes, audiences will be exclaiming, "Dude, I can't believe I sat through that movie!?"" and the New York Post said that it was: "An almost chuckle-free mess, so amateurish and lame that the cast often has that embarrassed look you see on dogs given ridiculous haircuts."[6] However, the New York News did praise the "surprisingly sweet-natured pairing" of Kutcher and Scott.[7]
References
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