It was December 15th, 2000. Hollywood was on a roll with raunchy comedies. American Pie had come out the year before, shocking audiences with its vulgarity and ushering prepubescent boys into manhood. The year 2000 brought us Road Trip and Scary Movie, and then, right before the end of the year, we got Dude, Where’s My Car.
The comedy/sci-fi was written by Philip Stark and directed by Danny Leiner, who later went on to direct Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.
The film starred Ashton Kutcher and Seann William Scott, with a supporting cast that included Jennifer Garner, Marla Sokoloff, Kristy Swanson, Hal Sparks, and Mary Lynn Rajskub. The movie felt like an early version of The Hangover—a film that would eventually become the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of its time.
The movie sparked a wave of pop culture moments in the years that followed: everyone wanted those Adidas jumpsuits, people got the tattoos, and then there were the ostriches. Or llamas. That summer, I went on vacation to Maine and discovered an ostrich farm right outside the supermarket. Naturally, we started calling them llamas and got a good laugh out of it. For anyone who hadn’t seen the movie, we just looked like people who didn’t know basic animals.
This post includes major spoilers, but let’s be honest—it’s been over two decades. The movie follows two stoners who wake up one morning and realize they can’t find their car, dude. Using clues, they retrace their steps from the night before, which somehow leads them to saving the world.
Early in the movie, Chester is watching Animal Planet and learns a fun fact about monkeys.
Their day is packed with ridiculous encounters: European bodybuilders, supermodel-like women in tight leather outfits, and everyone keeps asking them for the continuum transfunctioner. Jesse and Chester have no idea who to trust. Turns out, it’s the Nordic dudes who were sent to Earth to save it from the “super hot alien chicks.”
The climax of the movie takes place at an entertainment center, where the aliens square off against one another. As it turns out, Chester had the continuum transfunctioner the whole time—in the form of a Rubik’s Cube. Once solved, the device becomes a bomb that could destroy Earth—unless Chester can diffuse it. In a moment of panic, Chester remembers the Animal Planet documentary from that morning. It talked about how “chimpanzees often use crude sticks as tools.” So, he grabs a straw and defuses the bomb!
I can’t tell you how much this advice has helped me in real life. If I need to retrieve something stuck under the couch or press one of those impossible-to-reach buttons on an electronic device, this technique always comes through.
I’ve passed this lesson on to my son and others over the years.
It wasn’t “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It wasn’t “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” from Forrest Gump. It was “Chimpanzees often use sticks as crude tools” from Dude, Where’s My Car that taught me life’s greatest lesson.
Who knew that 20 years later, I’d still be using a piece of advice that a stoner learned from a monkey—and used to save the world?
