Carl and Molly Peterson are just starting their new life together--complete with a cute house, boring neighbors, stable jobs and the routines of newlywed existence. There's just one unfortunate hitch in their perfectly constructed new world. And his name's Dupree. Randy Dupree, Carl's oldest friend and perpetual bachelor, has found himself with nowhere to go after being fired. Carl yanks his jobless/homeless pal out of the bar he's living in and invites him to temporarily crash on the couch--that's just what friends do. At first, Carl is quite pleased to have his good buddy as a permanent couch guest, while Molly bears the brunt of Dupree's immature antics. But, as Carl becomes buried in his grown-up job, he finds it harder and harder to juggle Dupree and his responsibilities as a husband. To make matters worse, Dupree uses his ample spare time to become a great companion for Molly. Even her dad and the neighbors are falling for his carefree wisdom and charm--frustrating Carl to no end. Soon, everyone (but Carl) begins to root for Dupree to stick around. But as Dupree starts to become a fixture in the Peterson's home, three becomes not just a crowd--but a full blown, hilarious catastrophe.

Take a tired, clichéd and over done story, mix in some mediocre actors, throw in an occasional laugh and keep going long after you should have ended the movie and you will have what seemed to be the formula for You, Me and Dupree or any other marginally funny but mediocre comedy. You have seen the movie from House Guest to a myriad of other attempts at the story. You have seen the actor’s performances before, I doubt Owen Wilson has any other character in him and Matt Dillon seems to take a step back from Crash. You’ve seen most of the sight gags and humorous moments from other movies, nothing that new, guy won’t grow up and has antics at the expense of his friends. And then there is the ending, more unbelievable than anything else the movie present at anytime, nobody is fooled that Owen Wilson or his characters will be anything more than that stupid friend who has long lost his ability to make you laugh much less smile.

I am being a little harsh on the movie not because it couldn’t be funny at times which was but because at no time in the movie did they really try that hard to be anything out of the ordinary rather playing off other movies and every cliché you can think of. I sometimes wonder if they lock screenwriters in a room with a TV, a computer and thousands of movies and tell them to see if they can hack together a story from all the movies they are going to watch. I think we need to vote in some laws on movie plagiarism and the penalty should be the same if you plagiarize a literary work. The movie is not an original idea, nor our its jokes, so while they can be slightly amusing at times it can never escape the box of only being amusing because a joke is never as funny the second time or the fiftieth time you hear it.

I wonder about Matt Dillon, here is an actor who finally seemed to break away from such mundane roles and parts with last years Crash and the first movie he makes is a film that any number of actors in Hollywood could pull off. It’s hard to take the guy seriously when he is making movies like Herbie and Dupree. I don’t blame Kate Hudson and Owen Wilson for doing such sub par movies because I expect no better out of them and that is all they have ever done but for an actor like Dillon to turn in an Oscar like performance then go back to making sub par movies its unfathomable to me. At one time Owen Wilson was amusing, like that friend in middle school who could make you laugh by sticking 20 pears in their mouth at one time but those days are long gone. Owen Wilson is a horrid actor who has gotten lucky and somehow managed to get a name for himself so for the next ten years we will just have to endure mediocre movie after mediocre movie from him. Kate Hudson will always be that second fiddle, romantic comedy kind of girl as she now enters an age when it doesn’t work anymore, nobody wants to get romantic with a middle aged woman in the movies after all. So all in all You, Me and Dupree was a bust that could make you laugh and probably better left for a rental.

Grade: C-