Uncle Don’s Views of Nil Repute

Embarrassment was walking into the Spice Girls movie. Embarrassment

was sitting a few rows from the front at the Pacific Amphitheatre

listening to Tom Jones. Real embarrassment, however, was schlepping up to

the ticket window, asking for, paying for and then seeing “Dude, Where’s

My Car.” Oh well, some of the trials and tribulations of being a highly

overcompensated and well-respected columnist.

Big trouble was brewing when my evil editor called on Thursday and

said there was a new release that just screamed for an Uncle Don review.

This presupposed that the object of the review exuded qualities that the

two or three regular readers of this column would find invaluable.

Qualities such as dimwitted, infantile, gross, vapid, incoherent and

stupid. Those adjectives, when applied to “Dude, Where’s My Car,” are

superlatives.

With a plot shallower than the Santa Ana River in July, “Citizen

Kane,” it ain’t. “Citizen Lame” it is. Were “Dude, Where’s My Car” a

state, it’d be New Jersey. A sports team, the Clippers. A presidential

candidate, Al Gore. It’s a compendium of farces starring two losers who

couldn’t spell the word “dumb” if you spotted them the first five

letters.

A brief projector problem provided a token of hope that the film

wouldn’t screen, but a few missteps and misframed minutes later, the

sucker screened. Cloaked in a colossal cassock of continuous cretinism

“Dude, Where’s my Car” rapidly becomes a continuously growing stalagmite

of stupidity.

Two guys (Jesse and Chester) get drunk, party and can’t find their

car. In it is the presents bought for their shallow and vapid

girlfriends. It turns out Jesse and Chester ripped off a transsexual

transvestite stripper, won a year’s supply of pudding and are kidnapped

by bubble-wrapped wannabe aliens who are looking for the “continuum

transfunctioner,” which if not returned to the correct group of

leather-clad, Swedish accented aliens in sunglasses and Brylcreem who

keep popping up like teenager zits, then coming to an end will be the

universe (but unfortunately, not the movie).

Locating the car is tougher than any of the labors of Hercules, as

this giant booger of a movie just keeps rolling along. Those who find The

Three Stooges to be quite Shakespearean will consider “Dude, Where’s My

Car” to be quite beneath them.

Yes, it’s that idiotic. Breathtakingly idiotic. The actors’ guild

ought to sue all those on the screen for thespian malpractice. Kodak

should have repossessed the film upon which it was shot. And in this day

of power shortages, it should be illegal to waste electricity screening

this monstrosity.

Let me tell you something, you Gen-Xers and echo-boomers out there.

You’ve got a problem. The audience at the showing I attended was

populated not by teenagers, but by baby boomers. Your parents. The people

whose diapers you’re going to be changing in the next couple of decades

(or maybe weeks.) Man, have you got a problem ahead of you. What sort of

mentally recessive adults would voluntarily see “Dude, Where’s My Car?”

Maybe Democrats. Liberals. At least I had an excuse. The editor made me

do it.

Meanwhile, this flick gleefully rips off every film ever made. If

there were any original thoughts in this low-rent “Animal House,” they

were lobotomized out of the screenplay real early. Parents, keep your

kids away from this. The consequences of viewing? A guaranteed 50%

decrease in SAT scores, along with the requisite increase in drooling and

knuckle dragging.

The budget for this barker? The producers probably cashed in all their

Albertsons turkey bucks and Betty Crocker coupons to finance it.

By the end of the film, the four-letter word “dude is used so often

that it’s turned into a pejorative. Oh, and the car shows up. It appears

to be a Renault LeCar with more bad spots than a month-old banana. Jesse

and Chester, dim as five-watt bulbs, party on.

“Dude, Where’s My Car” ain’t the end of the world as we know it, but

it’s a shove in that direction. Go see it. Really. Then you can

appreciate Cheech and Chong, Beavis and Butthead, “Kentucky Fried Move”

and “The Groove Tube” for being the towering intellectual monuments they

really are.

* UNCLE DON reviews b-movies and cheesy musical acts for the Daily

Pilot. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]