As the third wheel, Wilson crashes and burns
In some relationships, a moment arrives when you look over at your boo and think, ``Why do I love you again?" After watching Owen Wilson as a shiftless bum in ``You, Me and Dupree," his tedious new sitcom of a movie, I'm prepared to dump him.
A few years ago, Wilson's lazy approach to Hollywood comedy seduced me. He seemed so much smarter than the movies he was in, say ``Shanghai Knights" (2003) or ``Around the World in 80 Days" (2004). That stoned, sideways strategy suggested a man who knew how to play dumb without looking stupid. But what was so fresh just a few movies ago is now just shtick.
The thrill, for me, is gone, though it's not all Wilson's fault. The material here is bad (Michael Le Sieur wrote the script), and the careless direction, by Anthony and Joe Russo, shoves the action along. But the star, who's as whiny and impossibly blond as ever, is charmless.
Unofficially, ``You, Me and Dupree " is a companion piece to last summer's ``Wedding Crashers," a movie whose lunacy is desperately needed this summer. There, Wilson and Vince Vaughn invited themselves to strangers' receptions and poached the women. This movie's premise is a lot less inspired: He's crashing a marriage by himself.
Newlyweds Molly and Carl (Kate Hudson, Matt Dillon) agree to let Wilson's Dupree, who was Carl's best man, move into their nice suburban home after he loses what we can only assume is yet another job. His stuffed moose head, board game, and irritable bowel come with him. Soon a toilet overflows, and a bathroom is fouled up (and not the one with the runny toilet, either). Dupree has the guys over to watch football, serves nachos on an heirloom tray, and sets the living room on fire during a date. None of this prompts an eviction. In fact, there's more where that came from.
Maybe we're meant to find an aimless, jobless 36-year-old couch-surfer appealing. But during and after every transgression, he just stands there oblivious. When a 13-year-old futzes around with the outgoing voice-mail message, brazenly orders HBO, or breaks into your secret porn stash, it's obnoxious. When a guy over three times his age does it -- then reacts like a 13-year-old -- it's grounds for a shrink. Still, the movie tries to force us into believing that Dupree is a free spirit, not a loon.
For comparison, we're shown Carl toiling thanklessly for his wicked father-in-law, a big-time land developer played by Michael Douglas. These sections of the movie are like ``The Devil Wears Today's Man." With Douglas and Wilson, Dillon does comic exasperation surprisingly well, but Wilson requires a counter-puncher both to keep him in line and egg him on. He needs Vince Vaughn. Otherwise, there's no mischief.
Dupree isn't even ambitious enough to make a move on Molly or to confess that he's been in love with Carl all these years. Only in America could a movie called ``You, Me and Dupree" not culminate in some sort of three-way.
This year Hollywood has given us feeble men who evade adulthood. Matthew McConaughey wouldn't leave the nest in ``Failure to Launch." Adam Sandler uses a magic remote control to make his problems go away in ``Click." And Superman has returned from wherever, lacking the gumption to tell Lois Lane he loves her.
Wilson is the most intolerable of all. Watching him slack his way through this movie made me feel like Lou Dobbs. I didn't like Dupree. I wanted him deported.
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com. 
