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.
PHOTO COURTESY OF UIP
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.
There are several problems with Dupree, not least that there is no filmmaking to speak of, just a progression of competent-looking scenes in which the actors appear to have successfully hit their marks. The directors, the brothers Anthony and Joe Russo, have made a few other features, including Welcome to Collinwood, an unnecessary redo of Big Deal on Madonna Street that nonetheless looked like someone was paying attention to the lighting and how objects and bodies fit in the frame, which isn't the case here. That said, they do manage to shoot Hudson most attractively in a fantasy sequence that finds her promenading in a bikini, thus fulfilling her primary function in the film as a decorative accessory.
Despite Hudson's itsy-bitsy bikini and that dollop of butter, You, Me and Dupree remains a limp attempt to wed a romantic comedy to a buddy comedy, largely because the filmmakers see women as visitors from another planet, which is more or less what they now are in Hollywood. Not surprisingly, as is often the case with comedies like this, the important love in the film — the one that dares not speak its name, but compels the guys to toss around the word “homo” so no one gets the wrong idea — isn't between a man and woman, but two male friends. Considering that Molly comes off as such a killjoy, clucking and scolding and nagging like mom, you understand why Carl and Dupree might want to sneak off — so do we.
Japan is celebrated for its exceptional levels of customer service. But the behavior of a growing number of customers and clients leaves a lot to be desired. The rise of the abusive consumer has prompted authorities in Tokyo to introduce the country’s first ordinance — a locally approved regulation — to protect service industry staff from kasuhara — the Japanese abbreviated form of “customer harassment.” While the Tokyo ordinance, which will go into effect in April, does not carry penalties, experts hope the move will highlight a growing social problem and, perhaps, encourage people to think twice before taking out their frustrations
Two years ago my wife and I went to Orchid Island off Taitung for a few days vacation. We were shocked to realize that for what it cost us, we could have done a bike vacation in Borneo for a week or two, or taken another trip to the Philippines. Indeed, most of the places we could have gone for that vacation in neighboring countries offer a much better experience than Taiwan at a much lower price. Hence, the recent news showing that tourist visits to Pingtung County’s Kenting, long in decline, reached a 27 year low this summer came
From a Brooklyn studio that looks like a cross between a ransacked Toys R Us and a serial killer’s lair, the artist David Henry Nobody Jr is planning the first survey of his career. Held by a headless dummy strung by its heels from the ceiling are a set of photographs from the turn of the century of a then 30-year-old Nobody with the former president of the US. The snapshots are all signed by Donald Trump in gold pen (Nobody supplied the pen). They will be a central piece of the New York artist’s upcoming survey in New York. This
Oct. 7 to Oct. 13 The Great Dragon Flags were so lavish and intricate that it’s said to have exhausted the supplies of three embroidery shops. Others say that the material cost was so high that three shops quit during production and it was finished by a fourth. Using threads with pure gold, the final price to create the twin banners was enough to buy three houses in the 1920s. Weighing 30kg each and measuring 454cm by 535cm by 673cm, the triangular flags were the pride of the Flying Dragons (飛龍團), a dragon dance troupe that performed for Chaotian
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