Yes, you read that right. Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000) is the subject of this month’s accolade. Is it possibly the stupidest movie ever made? The argument could and has been made. A landfill’s worth of critical contempt was dumped on this movie when it came out. A debate consisting of more than 450 comments on imdb (at present count) continues to rage. As I hope to show, however, it’s far more than just stupid. It was and remains one of the two or three funniest movies I’ve ever seen, and for that reason alone I insist that yes, Dude, Where’s My Car? is a movie you’ve gotta see. You don’t believe me? Just watch it. Watch it by yourself if you’re embarrassed to be seen watching it. I understand. It’s like porn for your sense of humor.

Directed by Danny Leiner (whose long list of inspired inanity includes Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle and episodes of The Office and Arrested Development) and written by Philip Stark (South Park, That 70’s Show), Dude was originally pitched as a live-action Beavis and Butthead movie. However, that never happened, and with the handsome, likable goofballs Ashton Kutcher as Jesse and Seann William Scott as Chester, the movie ended up becoming much gentler and friendlier, if equally absurdist. Made in the tradition of movies like Animal House, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and Dumb and Dumber, it also foreshadows the many subsequent comedies that feature idiotic, grungy guys on chaotic road-trip adventures who are also inexplicably irresistible to hot women. It is notably the template for a number of them, such as Hot Tub Time Machine and the interchangeable The Hangover and The Hangover 2, all of which are inferior in my opinion. Collegehumor.com has a very deft comparison video that goes so far as to imply that The Hangover’s plot was completely ripped from Dude:

What makes Dude a superior idiot movie is that it holds nothing back. It revels in taking things too far, and doesn’t worry about justifying the insane goings-on, so long as they’re funny and tie together in the end. Its look is bright and colorful, the effects are cheerfully cheesy, and the movie is packed with clever visual detail. Right away, we see by the set dressing of their scuzzy bachelor pad--including its “Alien Workshop” poster, lava lamp and other clues--that we’re in for a self-aware, Mystery Science Theater 3000 style romp. Among the many crucial bits of information we learn in the first few minutes are: that our two heroes are “sucky boyfriends” who’ve forgotten that it’s their first anniversary with their girlfriends, “the twins” (played by a pre-Alias Jennifer Garner and the pixie-ish Marla Sokoloff, who are so differently sized as to seem almost of different species from one another, let alone twins); that there’s a guy who lives in their closet and pees in their houseplant, but whom neither of them happen to know; that they’ve mysteriously acquired a lifetime supply of pudding; that Chester is a devotee of the Discovery Channel and learns crucial behaviors by emulating the animals he watches there; and that the boss at the pizza joint where they work considers them to be the worst employees he’s ever had (“Why, a trained dolphin could do a better job than you!” he yells at them, to which Jesse replies in all sincerity, “Well, sure…but then the pizzas would get all wet.”). As an aside, John Toles-Bey’s Pizzacoli looks eerily like former Godfather Pizza CEO and current presidential candidate Herman Cain might have, if he’d worn short dreadlocks in his early career. In addition to their native cluelessness, the boys have no memory of what’s happened in the past 24 hours; that they trashed the twins’ house; or that the “hottest of the hot” girls they know, Christie Boner (Kristy Swanson) gave them a view and a feel of her “hoo-hoos” at a wild party the night before in return for 500 bucks from a suitcase full of money that they don’t remember having either. There are hostile ostriches; a chubby blind boy enjoying a sexual discovery; the County Automobile Impound lady from hell; an incomprehensible but “onigable” (honorable) Frenchman keeping some other guy imprisoned in a cage; a variety of alien agents both male, female and somewhere in between; a cameo by Fabio; and who knows what else.

And then, of course, and then…and THENNNN there is the most obnoxiously passive-aggressive Chinese restaurant drive-thru speaker box in history.

In spite of the ever-accumulating storylines and oddball characters, what drives the boys’ entire action throughout the film is simple: The twins have promised them a “special treat” on this anniversary, which Jesse assumes and hopes is code for sex, and getting this treat will require their recovering their own anniversary gifts for the twins, which they think they left in the car they now can’t find. But far more than getting their “special treat” depends on their success: so does the fate of the entire universe. The stakes couldn’t possibly be simultaneously higher or more ridiculous.

Their search for their lost car leads them to consult a back-yard guru who owns a psychotic stoner dog; enter a nightclub where they get a standing ovation from the strippers; causes them to be kidnapped by a bubble-wrapped, alien-seeking cult led by the Zoltan (Hal Sparks) and his trusty girl Zelmina (Mary Lynn Rajskub, later to play Chloe, Jack Bauer’s most trusted ally on 24). “Trust no one!” the head kidnapper warns them. “Except for us,” interjects cultist Jeff. “Oh, yes, good point,” says the head kidnapper, “except for us!”

Despite its apparent randomness, the script is in fact exceptionally well structured. The plot is absurdly complicated and over-populated, but it all hangs together. All the threads come together in the end, and every set-up eventually pays off with great comic effect. For instance, the endlessly insistent Chinese drive-thru box that infuriates Jesse early on (” I refuse to play your Chinese food mind games!”) returns later when our heroes use it to side-track a pair of identical, ambiguously gay Nordic Aliens they want to get rid of, leaving the hapless pair stuck in the endless “and then?” loop. These two, like a competing team of Alien Hot Chicks, are after the potentially universe-destroying Continuum Transfunctioner (“a very mysterious and powerful device” whose “mystery is exceeded only by it's power,” we hear repeatedly)—a MacGuffin that turns out to be the Rubik’s Cube with which Chester has been fiddling for the whole movie. And, at the critical moment, its what Chester remembers from the Discovery Channel that saves the day, and the universe.

The other thing that make the movie work is its skillful use of some of the oldest comedic strategies. One is the use of repetition to the point of comic frustration (as in the “And then” bits, or the scene where Jesse and Chester discover and futilely keep trying to tell each other what the new tattoos on their backs say). Another element is the bliss of ignorance, as these two stooges happily accept (or miss) whatever calamity or insanity comes their way. Screenwriter/teacher Blake Snyder might have called this a “Fool Triumphant” film, and I employ the word “stooges” because this movie’s style of humor is timeless, for the same reasons that the original Three Stooges are timeless; love them or hate them (empirically, the only two possibilities), the Three Stooges have remained a constant and familiar touchstone of idiot humor. Where Harold Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy, even Buster Keaton have been largely forgotten in spite of their far more sophisticated physical and emotional comedy, Curly, Larry and Moe are known by almost everyone, as are many of their more famous schticks, because they were in fact geniuses of the comedic devices of the well-timed pratfall, the absurd as the norm, chaos upsetting the status quo, and amiable cluelessness. This movie exploits and succeeds with all these same elements.

Added to this, the dialog is simply very funny, especially when the film allows in random observations. For instance, when the Alien Hot Chicks merge into one “Super Hot Giant Alien” chick (so identified by an on-screen super-title) at the space alien-themed kiddie amusement park where the action climaxes, a young boy looks up at the gigantic, scantily clad alien babe and declares, “I want to go on that ride, Daddy!” to which Daddy replies, “Me too, son—me, too!”

And that’s exactly how I feel about this insistently silly, unapologetically ridiculous, and completely hilarious movie. Dude, you gotta see it.