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Writer - Michael Le Sieur

Director of photography - Charles Minsky

Editors - Peter B. Ellis and Debra Neil-Fisher

Music - Rolfe Kent

Production designer - Barry Robison

Producers - Owen Wilson, Scott Stuber and Mary Parent

Released by Universal Pictures.

108 minutes. Rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned) for mild adult language and sexual innuendo.

STARRING: Owen Wilson (Dupree), Kate Hudson (Molly), Matt Dillon (Carl), Seth Rogen (Neil), Amanda Detmer (Annie) and Michael Douglas (Mr. Thompson).

Carl Peterson is a one-woman man. He works as a junior designer in the real-estate development firm owned by Bob Thompson, his soon-to-be father-in-law. As played by Matt Dillon, Carl is a faceless cog in a large corporate enterprise, occupying Cubicle Twenty-six; but somehow he’s caught the attention (and the affections) of the boss’s daughter. We’re never really sure how, or why.

Bob Thompson (Michael Douglas) is also a one-woman man, and that woman happens to be his own daughter. Somewhere along the way (we’re also not sure how or why), Bob’s wife is no longer with us. (Perhaps she was spirited off by Carl’s entire family, who also do not exist, as far as we know.) And even though Bob tells Carl that he started dating again at some time, he has apparently never managed to hook up with significant others. No, he is wholly devoted to his daughter.

In fact, Bob Thompson has no intention of letting his daughter go. He belittles Carl in speeches to the wedding guests; he promotes his new son-in-law to Senior Designer and then undermines the development project that Carl heads; he gets offensively territorial about the family name, the family gene pool, and the family jewels.

If this weren’t bad enough for Carl, his best friend Dupree gets thrown into the mix. Winningly portrayed by Owen Wilson — is Wilson capable of anything less, or anything more? — Dupree is the Best Friend we have all known or heard about, though we may have never had. He’s the eternally “lovable screw-up” who’s really not all that lovable, but whose perennial inability to grow into a responsible adult remains oddly charming — not because such irresponsibility is admirable, but because our own increasingly conservative domestication doesn’t ultimately seem so superior.

Dupree, it turns out, is also a one-woman man. While Carl and his wife are on their honeymoon, Dupree has managed to lose both his job and his apartment. He even manages to lose the cot at the neighborhood watering hole. Carl takes pity on his Best Man, his Best Man’s bike, and his Best Man’s moose head, and invites Dupree to stay with them until he can get back on his feet. Or, until he perhaps grows some feet. And along the way, Carl — as his career, marriage, and house all begin to melt down — starts to suspect that the one woman for Dupree happens to be his own wife.

And in a way, Carl is right. The one woman for all three men is Molly, the stereotypically Perfect Woman. She’s tolerant. She’s forgiving. She’s perky, both in disposition and body. She’s pretty. She’s smart. She’s blonde and white, and she teaches underprivileged inner-city children. Kate Hudson is so perfectly cast in the role that there’s almost nothing for her to do but be photographed — which is probably fortunate.

You, Me and Dupree, after all, is a one-woman movie — quite literally — that is not really about Molly at all. In fact, she’s not even really included in the movie’s title. This is not a movie about Carl’s and Molly’s marriage being invaded by Dupree; it’s a movie about Bob, Carl, and Dupree, and what the Perfect Woman represents to each of them. For Bob, Molly is the Perfect Daughter to be owned. For Carl, Molly is the Perfect Wife to be put on a pedestal, but certainly not to be talked to or really lived with. For Dupree, Molly is the Perfect Ideal, and he is the Perfect Buddy — the kind of Perfect Storm Male that women love to hate and love to mother: the kind they love to save.

Directors Joe and Anthony Russo nail their demographic perfectly. American Pie, The Sandlot, and The Odd Couple collide with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup-style “success.” Not since Risky Business has there been a romantic comedy so misogynistic and so male-centered, yet made with such back-slapping, nudge-nudge precision that men are unlikely to notice how literally faceless the women in this film are (with that One Notable exception) — and scripted so ingratiatingly that women will fawn over Dupree in spite of (even because of?) his free-spirited and libertine male sexuality.

And in spite of the fact that audiences are likely to entirely miss the crass irony of this candy-cotton exercise in celluloid, I’m almost convinced that the Russos are sniggering to themselves about how they managed to use an Owen Wilson summer comedy to make a statement about our culture’s pornographic objectification of women.

Almost. There’s no doubt that the Russos are up to something. I’m just not sure they’re that smart.

I am certain that most audiences won’t be. They’ll lap this movie up, and won’t give the saccharine irony a second thought. It almost doesn’t deserve it.