Guess Who's Coming Over?

Well, I wouldn't want to release a good movie in the backwash of The Black Pearl, either. So it isn't surprising that the week after the biggest opening of all time we have a bit of counter-programming that is half-hearted at best with two crude comedies. What is interesting is that both have the same theme: the lives of an adorable young couple are disrupted and then enriched by the arrival of an obnoxious and out of control character who moves in with them.

In You, Me and Dupree the adorable couple (Matt Dillon and Kate Hudson) returns from their honeymoon to find that the groom's slacker best friend has lost his job and his apartment, so he moves in with them for "a couple of days." In Little Man, a hard-core criminal who is the size of a toddler (Marlon Wayans' head on the body of a small body) pretends to be a baby and is taken in by an adorable couple (Kerry Washington and Shawn Wayans). In neither case does hilarity ensue.

There have been a lot of classic movies about free spirits who turn the lives of straight-laced people upside down -- you know, the ones where the reserved and proper and play-by-the-rules type complains throughout the movie and then says at the end, "You know, this was the best day of my life."

Classics in this genre that have the characters actually living together include "The Odd Couple" and "The Man Who Came to Dinner." A slyly spicy movie about a three-way relationship is Noel Coward's "Design for Living." All are worth renting -- these are movies in which hilarity ensues, big time.