Hollywood can’t get enough of Owen Wilson and his beach bum charm. The fluffy actor plays yet another tactless rebel in Anthony and Joe Russo’s best man comedy, You, Me and Dupree. Having escorted Matt Dillon to the altar to marry Kate Hudson, Wilson promptly moves into the newlyweds’ home because he’s single, broke and unemployable. He is also an unreconstructed beer-guzzling liability who blocks the toilet, trashes the furniture and threatens to derail the marriage.

There’s a touch of Monsieur Hulot about Wilson’s performance as Dupree that takes the edge off the clichés. Life is marvellously simple if you have no desire to grow up. Inviting strippers around to the Dillons after an impromptu football party is as natural as reaching for the butter when a nymphomaniac librarian drops around for a tango.

A prissy Hudson is exquisitely unimpressed. A dull Dillon is torn between envy of his friend’s liberal values and fury about Dupree’s designs on his wife. Once these familiar lines are drawn the comic monotony sets in. The directors shy away from injecting any real venom into the plot for fear of poisoning their star. Wilson’s anti-Establishment appeal is shamelessly indulged. He is the lucrative point of the film, which is presumably why he co-produced it. The camera ruffles his blond locks and dribbles over his good looks. By contrast, Mr and Mrs Dillon look like tetchy bits of scenery.

Hudson’s beastly father (Michael Douglas) is recruited as the villain with strict instructions to dress up as Gordon Gekko and spank Dillon for being a useless son-in-law. Douglas is a smooth, humiliating pleasure as a ruthless property tycoon with no morals to speak of. Unfortunately, he does nothing to ease the stifling déjà vu that hamstrings the situation comedy and the characters. The fitful laughs are loaded with regret.

JAMES CHRISTOPHER

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