Two's company, three's a bore

The movies have long nurtured the arrested development of the American male, serving as a virtual playpen for legions of slobbering big babies for whom Peter Pan isn't a syndrome but a way of life. Where once Lou Costello's roly-poly cheeks shuddered as violently as a milk-starved newborn in Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Vince Vaughn's jowls now tremble excitedly in Wedding Crashers. The difference being, of course, that while Costello had only Abbott, Vaughn conquers vixens and virgins alike with his signature mix of alpha-male braggadocio and thumb-sucker hunger.

And what of Owen Wilson, Vaughn's partner in booty call from Wedding Crashers, the smooth operator with the zigzag nose who's looking to score again this week with a trifle called You, Me and Dupree? This time Wilson's partner in bad-boy crime is Matt Dillon, providing yeoman straight-man support as Dupree's best friend, Carl, whose new marriage to Molly (Kate Hudson) puts a kink in the men's friendship. Will Carl and Dupree remain tight? Will Carl and Molly do the same after Dupree moves in and almost burns down their house? Will it all end happily after the poop jokes, pratfalls and modest disturbances? Are you kidding? Will you laugh anyway? Possibly. Loudly? Not so much.

Fans of the director Wes Anderson know Wilson as the writing partner on his best films — Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums — as well as one of his most important on-camera collaborators. Wilson's brother, the actor Luke Wilson, wore his heart on his hospital togs in The Royal Tenenbaums, and eventually secured both the beautiful girl and a melancholically happy ending. But as crucial to the film's emotional and psychological texture was Owen Wilson's turn as a drug-addled writer of purple-sage prose fated to unwittingly stick pins in his own pomposity. Anderson was clearly the artistic genius in residence, but it was Owen Wilson who helped make sure the air they breathed never became too rarefied.

With his beach-bum good looks and an instantly recognizable twang suggestive of easy and high times, Wilson has in recent years become something of an unexpected if modest star. Although he has taken on serious roles — a serial killer in one film, a downed fly boy in another — he often plays Zen masters and slackers with more than a passing resemblance to Spicoli, the stoner-surfer played by Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. The shocks of blond and the broken beaks are the obvious points of comparison, but there's something of Spicoli, the eternal teenager, in Wilson's characterizations, too. Now 37, he has found success splashing in the shallow end of the pool alongside Vince, Ben, Will, Jack and the other boy-men of modern Hollywood comedy.

“All I need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz and I'm fine,” Spicoli explains in Fast Times. Dupree doesn't say anything nearly as memorable (the writer is Michael Le Sieur, earning his first big-screen credit), though he embodies a similar hang-10 vibe. The film actually opens in Hawaii with a blowout wedding paid for by Molly's creepily overprotective father, whom Michael Douglas tries and fails to make funny. Soon after, Dupree moves in with the newlyweds and proceeds to stink up the bathroom, among other offenses. More entertainingly, he woos a lady friend by serving up Tone Loc's ridiculous hit Funky Cold Medina with a large helping of butter, an amusing bit that, like most of the setups, is soon lost amid too much choreographed mayhem.