One-man act

Owen Wilson is a comic success once again in You, Me and Dupree. But that may be the only good news in this particular case.

Wilson plays Dupree, lifelong slacker and endlessly charming goofball. But there are two more characters in that title—the “you and me” refers to newlyweds Carl and Molly (played by Matt Dillon and Kate Hudson), and they are major characters in the story (scripted by Michael LeSieur), but they’re not even close to being equal partners with Wilson in the comic narrative that plays itself out here.

It is a measure of Wilson’s gift as a comic actor that he can make Dupree a consistently sympathetic figure in a tale that gives so much intimate attention to this couple whose lives he so farcically disrupts. But so much of the film is about Carl and Molly that you can’t help noticing that even with the likes of Hudson, Dillon and Michael Douglas present, the production frequently falls flat when Wilson’s Dupree is not on screen.

It is also a measure of something else: that Hollywood is getting so much entertainment mileage out of slacker/sage figures played by the likes of Wilson, Jack Black and perhaps even Vince Vaughn. It does make certain sense that the movies’ most engaging heroes in these extravagantly confused times take comic form. But You, Me and Dupree scatters itself in so many disparate directions (buddy picture, romantic comedy, high-end satire, motivational sermon) that even its liveliest impulses are squandered.

Some of us local viewers may also be wondering what’s up with Amanda Detmer’s part in this flick. Detmer, born and bred in Chico, has sixth billing, but in the role of fifth-billed Seth Rogen’s bossy and almost entirely unseen (yet much deferred-to) wife, she gets far less screen time than 13th-billed Sidney S. Liufau (as Paco, the security guard) and distinctly less visibility than 11th-billed Lance Armstrong, whose ultra-brief cameo could probably be measured in milliseconds.