There are many staples of genre in cinema. The Rom-Com, the Chick-Flick, the Spaghetti Western, these are all firmly established in the public imagination, and rightly so. I propose that a new designation be added; that of The Dude Movie.
The Oxford English dictionary states the meaning of the word dude as:
Informal Noun.
American English slang for an individual, typically male. From the 1870s to the 1960s, dude primarily meant a person who dressed in an extremely fashionable manner (a dandy) or a conspicuous citified person who was visiting a rural location, a “city slicker”. In the 1960s, dude evolved to mean any male person, a meaning that slipped into mainstream American slang in the 1970s. Current slang retains at least some use of all three of these common meanings.
So, with that in mind, I present to you my all-time top ten Dude movies, for all you dudes out there. You know who you are.
Dude Where’s My Car?
Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott tick a lot of boxes in this 2000 comedy. Of Dudeism, that is. The film itself is hit-and-miss, but as stoners obsessed with getting laid, stoned and paid (and finding their car obviously) they are certainly displaying the character traits of the typical, urban, common-or-garden Dude. The tattoo scene is totally awesome though. Y’know, this one:
Point Break
The ultimate surfer dude movie, this 1991 flick pits Patrick Swayze’s wave-guru Bodhi (probably short for bodacious) against Keannu Reeves’ undercover fed Johnny Utah (probably should have been Joe No-way-brah!).
The pseudo philosophical opting-out-of-society-by-robbing-the-man ideal put forward by the Ex-Presidents leader is somewhat shaky, as is the plot, but there are some lovely action scenes and some super-dudey dialogue. A 90’s classic, it has endured in the hearts of dudes everywhere, so much so that they did a re-make in 2015.
