Product: Dude Where's My Car (With Borat Preview Disc) (2000)
Rating: 5.0
A triumph of nihilistic existentialism
With minimalist setup, deft wordplay, and characterization that is brilliant in its reserved subtlety, this film is hauntingly reminiscient of the greatest works of existential literature of the past hundred years. Jesse and Chester demonstrate their astounding mastery of the craft as they assume (nay, become), what can only be described as the Vladimir and Estragon of the stoner-flick genre, simultaneously lost in their own struggles with self while bravely overcoming the conflicts thrust upon them by an uncaring world. In an overt homage to Franz Kafka's seminal novel, "The Metamorphosis," the two awake to find that they have been cheated of the ego, and, much like Gregor and Samson, are left without transportation in our modern dystopia where a car is so direly neccessary to the realization of the Freudian being. The quest that follows can be compared to "Waiting for Godot", only without the waiting, as the frantic and sometimes near incomprehesible pace of the film is set in play to satirize our own neomodern, hyperindustrial lives where one cannot pause, even for a moment, to enjoy the scenery, or, in this case, the "Shibby." It's understandable that the screenwriter had to invent the term for this masterpiece of cinema: his grasp of language makes him a modern-day Shakespeare, and he seems almost chained to the inadequacies of English prose as he struggles to connect with his audience (For anyone with an advanced degree in French Literature, you'll find the alternative language track to be quite illuminating). The acting in this film is deliberately downplayed, and it is clear that the director sought to mimic the tone (though not the qualms) of the German Minimalist theatre. Further, the extraterrestrials (or so we are to believe!) are overtly malicious in a striking parallel to Dostoyevsky's narrator in "Notes," although the Lynchesque makeup design seems, unfortunately, a distractingly obtuse addition to the otherwise restrained and dignified scenes. Alas, like Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead", this brief film serves only to awaken the viewer to the concepts to be expounded upon in the epic, four-hour sequel "Seriously Dude, Where's My Car", an opus that surely cannot be missed by anyone espousing to be of the literati.