'You, Me and Dupree,' 'Little Man' Hit Theaters

This weekend at the box office, a loser and a little man go head-to-head. But they’ll have to wrangle with “Pirates” and “Superman” to really hit it big.

“You, Me and Dupree,” starring Owen Wilson, Kate Hudson and Matt Dillon, and the Wayans brothers’ “Little Man” are in theaters now — and both are hoping to score with audiences.

It could be a tall order. They’ve already tanked with critics.

“Look, we’re not curing any diseases in this. We set out to deliver some good laughs and stay loose, stay liquid, laugh a lot,” said Wilson in comments to the press. “I think we deliver.”

Depends on who you talk to, of course.

FOX News’ Bill McCuddy says that “You, Me and Dupree” should be called “ ‘You, Me and Deprived’ … It’s almost laugh-free.” And Associated Press film critic Christy Lemire writes that Wilson’s Dupree character — who mooches off newlywed friends played by Hudson and Dillon — is “just too unrealistic, even for the sake of comedy.” She gives it a paltry one-and-a-half stars out of four.

All three of the flick’s lead actors say they have either had a friend who outstayed his welcome or been a Dupree themselves.

“I live with Duprees,” said Hudson, who is married to Black Crowes rocker Chris Robinson. “I usually have people staying in my house crashing. But I’m pretty open to it. I like it.”

Wilson, who was involved in production on the movie, joked that he and brother Luke Wilson were such leeching losers to another brother that it had dire consequences.

“My older brother blames the failure of his first marriage on Luke and I, because we were always hanging around his house,” he said.

“Little Man” may follow suit and do little else than elicit groans in the theater, though the Wayans do have their following.

First, a quick plot summary: A Little Person jewel thief poses as a baby to dodge the law.

McCuddy describes the flick as Mini Me meets “a Wayans Brothers’ potty humor comedy” and says that “some extremely effective special effects and a few laugh-out-loud gags make this almost worth seeing.”

The operative word may be “almost.” Lemire trashes “Little Man,” saying it’s “big on gross-out humor and slapsticky sight gags that appeal to the lowest common denominator, but small on genuinely clever laughs.”

The idea came straight from director Keenen Ivory Wayans, who once did a sketch playing an X-rated infant comedian.

“I always liked that character,” he said.

From a wacky special-effects perspective, it wasn’t easy super-imposing the face of Marlon Wayans — Keenen’s brother and one of the co-stars and writers along with brother Shawn Wayans, — on a two-and-a-half-foot body.

“It had never been done before in a movie,” Keenen Wayans said. “People have done it for 10 seconds, 15 seconds in a commercial, but nobody’s ever tried to do it in a movie.”

Fans of the Wayans’ other creations — “White Chicks” and “Scary Movie” — probably won’t be disappointed, since “Little Man” delivers the same juvenile jokes its predecessors did.

The Wayans were certainly pleased with the end result.

“It’s up there with the rest of the films,” said Marlon and Shawn Wayans. “This one, just all around, is … our best film yet.”

We’ll see if moviegoers agree.

FOX News' Catherine Donaldson-Evans contributed to this report.