Dude, Where’s My Car?

I was six, going on seven for most of 2000. The millennium is a mystery to me. My best recollection consists of a redheaded pizza delivery boy sulking into a suicide booth only to reappear amid floating cars and chrome sheen. That year implies, however, something else—Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000)—a stoner comedy featuring Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott. I could barely play computer games at the time. But the title stuck in mind, and, like its main characters, I lazily got around to it sometime later.

25 years later to be precise. I loved it. I loved its absurd sensibility, its total rejection of audience expectations. The two get high and drunk one night only to lose their car, in which they’ve stored their anniversary gifts. They slowly realize they were throwing bills around, buying expensive cars, getting tattoos, and contracting alterations to expensive track suits. Like Ulysses before them, they must set out on a journey, one that will, unsurprisingly, land them back home. Unlike Ulysses, they hope to return to their twin girlfriends; they somehow share an anniversary.

Simple enough it seems. But not so. As their journey progresses, various factions accost them over a so-called “continuum transfunctioner” with the power to destroy the universe. Some are Nordic techno DJs. Others promise them “extreme pleasure” from skin-tight bodysuits. This too they suppose is in their car—now replaced by a sporty BMW convertible, though that’s no help in their adventure.

Dude, Where’s My Car’s absurdity sometimes veers into the uncomfortable. Two characters are blatantly transphobic; its hilarious “and then” Chinese drive-thru bit ends up weighed down by racial stereotypes. Does that merely make it a product of its time? As much as its horny humor and breast-augmentation fixation. Uncomfortable yes, though—for me anyway—not totally ruinous.

The film’s MacGuffin obsession gives Hitchcock a run for his money. The filmmakers knew they were making light comedy for a stoner audience. Judged by that standard it succeeds. I even enjoyed it sober; you should too!