YOU, ME AND DUPREE

There is a tendency to admit--after the fact--that a film had something moderately interesting to think about. This week I watched MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 3 and YOU, ME AND DUPREE. The choice to watch these movies lay with friends; I didn't select them. It's weird, because I had told one of my friends that I wasn't into action, suspense and dumb dialogue films. But as soon as I got over there, MI 3 was on cable, and my friends were watching it. They had organized a "movie night" that was really just a viewing of what was on tv on their high definition, surround sound video system.

I actually saw the first MI with Tom Cruise back in the nineties. While I was watching MI 3, I kept thinking about how I had dragged my friend who had a Ph.D. from Harvard in anthropology to this droll film. She watched it, but she made no comment afterward. I just tried to pick out the actors I liked in the film (Lawrence Fishburne, Ving Rhames and the Belfast actor whose name I can't recall. In fact, he and an English actor were the only Europeans in this very American-Hollywood-patriotic marvel of a film.

The actors in YOU, ME AND DUPREE saved it for me, too. Actually, I only like Matt Dillon. Kate Hudson has shown that small breasts, thinnish lips and very small breasts can be a part of a beautiful Hollywoodish young actress. Her acting itself, though, is flat to me. Matt's was very flat. He's best as New Yorker. Playing an LA-style character is just not him. It's like he's from another country, and everyone is less self-conscious.

The peroxide-headed actor, Owen Wilson, is just not funny. He's not even cute. How did he get into films, I wonder? He's one for whom the Stanislavsky method really has paid off.

There are marriages between man and woman in both of these films. Another common occurrence in each film was the union of a man at least 12-15 years older than the woman. The difference was subtle, because Cruise, Matt Dillon and Owen Wilson are all boyish, though two are over 40. Of course, all of these actors have had their share of plastic surgery. I was looking forward to watching a thought-provoking film. But all I got were two films that stated that real love is dependent upon how good one looks.