You, Me and Dupree

Owen 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 (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 Dupree is not on screen.