Dude, Where's My Car?

Dude, Where's My Car?
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Danny Leiner
Produced by	Gil Netter
Written by	Philip Stark
Starring	Ashton Kutcher Seann William Scott
Music by	David Kitay
Cinematography	Robert M. Stevens
Editing by	Kimberly Ray
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	December 15, 2000 (2000-12-15)
Running time	82 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$13 million[1]
Box office	$73,180,723[2]

Dude, Where's My Car? is a 2000 American stoner comedy film directed by Danny Leiner.^[3] The film stars Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott as two young men who find themselves wasted and forget where they parked their car.

Although the film was panned by critics, it was a modest box-office success and has since managed to develop a cult following after its home video release.

The title of the film has become a benchmark of popular culture of the time of its release. It is referenced widely in many different situations, an example being Dude, Where's My Country?, the title of a political book by Michael Moore criticizing post-9/11 United States. It is unclear whether the title is itself an homage to the 1998 film The Big Lebowski where John Goodman asks Jeff Bridges: "Dude, where's your car?"

Plot

Jesse Montgomery III (Ashton Kutcher) and Chester Greenburg (Seann William Scott) are two slackers who awaken, at Jesse's house, with hangovers and no memory of how they got there. Their refrigerator is filled with containers of chocolate pudding, and the answering machine contains an angry message from their twin girlfriends, Wilma (Marla Sokoloff) and Wanda (Jennifer Garner), as to their whereabouts. They emerge from their home to find Jesse's car missing, and with it their girlfriends' one-year anniversary presents. This prompts Jesse to ask the film's titular question: "Dude, where's my car?"

Because the twins have promised them a "special treat", which Jesse and Chester take to mean sex, the men are desperate to retrieve their car. The duo begins retracing their steps in an attempt to discover just where they left the car. Along the way, they encounter an angry transgender stripper (Teressa Tunney), a belligerent Chinese food drive-in restaurant speaker box operator (voice of Freda Foh Shen), discover two appropriately-worded tattoos on each other's backs, run into a group of UFO cultists led by Zoltan (Hal Sparks), a Cantonese-speaking Chinese tailor (Keone Young), the Zen-minded Nelson (David Herman) and his cannabis-loving dog, the aggressive jock Tommy (Charlie O'Connell) and his musclehead friends, Tommy's girlfriend Christie Boner (Kristy Swanson), a couple of hard-nosed police detectives, and a reclusive ostrich farmer named Pierre (Brent Spiner). The story continues as a buddy film, with elements of science fiction when the protagonists meet two groups of aliens, one group being five gorgeous, long-haired women with large breasts and wearing black jumpsuits (Mitzi Martin, Nichole M. Hiltz, Linda Kim, Mia Trudeau, and Kim Marie Johnson), the other being two Norwegian accented men wearing aerobic clothing (Christian Middelthon and David W. Bannick), searching for something called the "Continuum Transfunctioner", a mysterious and powerful device, whose mystery is only exceeded by its power (something that the protagonists are reminded of continuously throughout the film). The "Continuum Transfunctioner" is capable of destroying the universe, and becomes an additional MacGuffin in Jesse and Chester's adventure.

A helpful piece of information appears halfway through the film—though Jesse and Chester do not know it at the time—in the form of an Animal Planet^[4] program about how animals 'often use sticks as crude tools'. Adding "save all of existence" to their list of tasks, Jesse and Chester trek onward. In an arcade, they discover that the Continuum Transfunctioner was a Rubik's Cube that Chester has been working hard to solve during most of the movie, and eventually does (thus activating it). Once the five lights on it stop flashing, the universe will be destroyed.

Jesse and Chester must determine which of two sets of aliens is entitled to the device. One of the groups protects the universe, the other is there to destroy it. Both claim to be the protectors of the universe, and both state that they were with Jesse and Chester the previous night (which Jesse and Chester still cannot remember) and ask for the Transfunctioner. The two correctly choose the men, because when the men were asked what the two stoners did the night before, they correctly respond that the stoners got a hole in one at the 18th hole at a miniature golf park, and won a lifetime supply of pudding. At the last second, they deactivate the Transfunctioner, thus saving the universe.

Baulked, the five alien women merge together to become a giantess (Jodi Ann Paterson), called "Super Hot Giant Alien" by Chester. The protectors intervene, attempting to banish her to Hoboken, New Jersey, but are knocked out. The giantess then devours Tommy before she crawls out of the amusement center and chases Jesse and Chester, almost stepping on a table at which a young boy is having a birthday party. The cultists tell them to activate the Photon Accelerator Annihilation Beam on the Transfunctioner. However, the button that activates it is too far in to reach. At the last second, Chester remembers the nature show with the tool-using chimps and uses a straw to push the recessed button, thus destroying the alien (and inadvertently saving Tommy from being digested). The two protectors erase everyone's minds concerning the events and time is reversed to the beginning of the film.

The events come full circle as Jesse and Chester wake up with no memory of what happened to them much like the beginning of the film. However, they recover the car (a Renault Le Car), which turned out to be hidden behind a mail truck the whole time, and salvage their relationships and discover the special treat from the girls turns out to be matching knitted caps and scarves. The protectors leave a gift for their girlfriends (and, indirectly, for the two young men): Breast Enhancement Necklaces.

Cast

• Ashton Kutcher as Jesse Montgomery III
• Seann William Scott as Chester Greenburg
• Jennifer Garner as Wanda
• Marla Sokoloff as Wilma
• Kristy Swanson as Christie Boner
• David Herman as Nelson
• Hal Sparks as Zoltan
• Charlie O'Connell as Tommy
• John Toles-Bey as Mr. Pizzacoli
• Timmy Williams as Jeff
• Jodi Ann Paterson as Super Hot Giant Alien
• Freda Foh Shen as Chinese Foooood Voice
• Bill Chott as Big Cult Guard
• Teressa Tunney as Tania
• Christian Middelthon and David W. Bannick as Alien Nordic Dudes
• Keone Young as Mr. Li
• Fabio as Himself
• Mitzi Martin, Nichole M. Hiltz, Linda Kim, Mia Trudeau, and Kim Marie Johnson as Alien Jumpsuit Chicks
• Mary Lynn Rajskub as Zelmina
• Pat Finn as Officer Rick
• Brent Spiner (uncredited) as Pierre
• Andy Dick (uncredited) as Mark
• Joyce Giraud (uncredited) as girl in car with Fabio

Release

Critical reception

Critical reception of the film was poor. The BBC Film review gave it 1 star, calling the direction "a lame-brained travesty" and "intensely irritating" and the film as a whole "painfully unamusing".^[5] Rotten Tomatoes reports that 18% of critics gave the film a positive review, based on 55 reviews with the consensus that "the movie isn't funny".^[6] The review aggregator Metacritic gave the film a score of 30, based on 17 reviews.^[7] The Austin Chronicle concluded, "Dude, Your Movie Sucks". USA Today said: "Any civilization that can produce a movie this stupid probably deserves to be hit by famine and pestilence." The Chicago Tribune said: "At the end of 83 unmerciful minutes, audiences will be exclaiming, "Dude, I can't believe I sat through that movie!?"" and the New York Post said that it was: "An almost chuckle-free mess, so amateurish and lame that the cast often has that embarrassed look you see on dogs given ridiculous haircuts."^[7] However, the New York News did praise the "surprisingly sweet-natured pairing" of Kutcher and Scott.^[8]

Box office

Despite the poor critical reception, the film opened at #2 at the North American box office making $13,845,914 USD in its opening weekend behind What Women Want, which opened at the top spot, the opening of Dude just barely beat How the Grinch Stole Christmas's fifth weekend by about $40,000.^[9]

Home media

The DVD was released on June 26, 2001 with 7 deleted and extended scenes, an audio commentary with Kutcher, Scott, and Leiner, a behind-the-scenes featurette, the music video for Grand Theft Audio's "Stoopid Ass", TV spots, and the theatrical trailer.

On TV, when Jesse and Chester first see Christie Boner, they say her name, but when they get to "Bon-", the words are cut and the shot moves to Christie.^[10]

Soundtrack

See also: Dude, Where's My Car? (soundtrack)

References

1. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0242423/business
2. ^ "Dude, Where's My Car? (2000)". Box Office Mojo. 2002-08-28. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=dudewheresmycar.htm. Retrieved 2011-04-20. 
3. ^ Dude, Where's My Car? at the Internet Movie Database
4. ^ Memorable quotes of the film
5. ^ BBC Films. "Dude, Where's My Car". http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2001/01/29/dude_wheres_my_car_2001_review.shtml#rating. 
6. ^ Rotten Tomatoes. "Dude, Where's MyCar". http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dude_wheres_my_car/. 
7. ^ ^{a b} Metacritic. "Dude, Where's My Car". http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/dudewheresmycar. 
8. ^ New York News. "Dude, Where's My Car". Daily News. http://www.nydailynews.com/index.html. 
9. ^ "Weekend Box Office Results for December 15-17, 2000". Box Office Mojo. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2000&wknd=50&p=.htm. Retrieved 2011-04-20. 
10. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0242423/alternateversions

External links

• Dude, Where's My Car? at the Internet Movie Database
• Dude, Where's My Car? at AllRovi
• Dude, Where's My Car? at Box Office Mojo
• Dude, Where's My Car? at Rotten Tomatoes