Well , I had to run out and see this one. I read it was finished about two years ago but didn’t see the light of day because someone thought it was a stinker. The big name cast probably added to the delay – when you’re a guy like Warren Beatty, you’d rather not have another bomb in the category of “Ishtar” on your hands.
And quite a cast it is – there’s Warren and Gary and Goldie and Diane. Do I need to mention last names? In addition, there’s Natassaja Kinski and Andie MacDowell and Jenna Elfman and Charlton Heston. Now you know why they held off releasing it just in case it was that bad. And was it? Let’s put it this way – I was hoping to really trash it, but it turns out to be a perfect “5.0”. Yeah, that’s my rating. This movie is as exactly in the middle as it could be. I didn’t hate it but I don’t recommend it.
The basics are that Warren and Diane are one married couple having just reached their twenty-fifth anniversary. Their best friends are another married couple, played by Gary and Goldie. I kind of thought Gary and Diane seemed more like a natural coupling and Goldie should have been with Warren, but, never mind. This movie plays out much like a very expensive television sitcom. Quick scene here, cue the laugh track, cut to the next wacky scene, cue the laugh track. They were trying so hard it hurt. There weren’t conversations with bits of humor in them, there was just thirty second scenes all motivated by, hopefully, something funny by the end of them. It could have been an episode of “Laugh-In”. Which is too bad, because the punch lines aren’t very funny and the whole movie is about remaining faithful to your spouse. Which isn’t really a very funny thing to most people.
The movie starts out trying to give you an idea of Warren’s very wacky world. He and Diane come home from Paris and immediately encounter culture shock in the home when we are introduced to the foreign lovers of their daughter and their housekeeper. Both guys barely speak English and one runs around with no shirt and his belly hanging out. Zany, isn’t it? Shortly thereafter, the infidelities begin and it’s like a bad version of “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice”. For those of you who are younger, there are reminders of the television sitcom “Three’s Company”. You know, where one person is talking about something and the other person thinks it’s something else and there’s misinterpretations, and, before you know it, mayhem ensues!
But it’s not all bad. Both Warren and Diane are architects and at one point they talk (seriously too) about marriage and long-term relationships and do some comparing to buildings. I liked that. There wasn’t enough of that. Instead, it was time to slip on another banana peel. You get the impression the cast is above all this. I felt like this is how it’s going to be if the writers do have that strike. And just wait till the movie gets to Sun Valley, Idaho. That’s when Charlton Heston enters the fray as the wackiest of all the wackies in this movie. I did laugh, mostly at his wife, a wheelchair bound nasty person with a dirty mouth. Sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? So, how does it end up with a “5.0” on my scale? Simple- I laughed just enough not to get angry with all the poor attempts at humor. I mean this movie takes a lot of shots at making you laugh. You won’t laugh very much, but these four main characters give it their all and I have to give a few points for that. I’m just not recommending you spend any money on this movie. Wait for television, which won’t be long.
Friday, April 13th, 2001
As I waited for this thing to begin, I had to sit through previews for what seemed like ten more dumb guy movies starring Saturday Night Live people. There was Chris Kattan and Tom Green and Rob Schneider and it was dopey guy does this followed by dopey guy does that and through all this, I had time to figure out why all this was happening to me. You see, when guys like Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey break through with big hits, the studios are anxious to find the next cash cow dumb guy. After all, these movies cost like a couple of million to make and can rake in hundreds of millions if all goes well. I mean, who knew Ace Ventura would start Jim Carrey off to a career that has made truckloads of cash for the movie people? The trick now is to find more Jim Carrey’s and Adam Sandler’s and that’s a process of trial and error. And that brings us to Joe Dirt.
David Spade is an excellent comic actor. He’s perfect on the TV show “Just Shoot Me”. But that’s who he is and all he’s going to be as a comic actor. Obnoxious, sharp, the little devil boy. The kid in the back of class who’s half-nerd, half-cool. The character of Joe Dirt is not a role David Spade was meant to play. It doesn’t help that this movie has almost not one laugh in it.
As if you need to know, Joe Dirt is a goofy guy who’s searching for his parents. Over twenty years ago, he either got lost or was left on purpose at the Grand Canyon and has ended up as a janitor at an LA radio station. What came between all this is the story Joe tells on Dennis Miller’s morning radio show. Let me stop right here and tell you how much I hate this plot device. This contrived radio show of Miller’s is something many movie and TV screenwriters love to use. And I can tell you, if we ever aired a guy like Joe Dirt to tell his lame story on our show, people would not be gathered around their radios in rapt attention for the next sentence like they’re depicted in this movie. They’d be changing the stations faster than I wanted to exit this garbage movie. In this movie, Joe Dirt gets a fan club and becomes a local sensation. Yeah, right. That happens all the time. These writer goof balls are actually fascinated by radio and think they can write what really goes on. How pathetic.
I guess one of the big jokes here is Joe Dirt’s hair. If you’ve seen any commercials for this movie, you know what I mean. He was born with no skull cap, so his Mom plopped a wig on his head and the hair fused onto the top of his head, and , of course, the thing looks ludicrous. There, now you’re in on the movie’s best joke. Other than that, there’s poo-poo jokes. I’m not really a demanding guy. I thought “The Water Boy” was a hoot. I’ve got nothing against dumb guy movies. But this movie is a stinker and that’s not just because of all the feces in it. You can’t just have the poop. Sure, a five year old will find that funny. But even a ten year old wants a little more done with the poop to make it funny. Somebody writing this movie missed that distinction.
Here’s what’s is interesting though. Joe Dirt is not simply a dumb guy. It must have occurred to David Spade or the writers that Spade is no Jim Carrey or Adam Sandler because they made the Joe Dirt guy kind of smart and gave him some sort of a moral nature. He even says to the Dennis Miller radio guy, “if you’re just going to make fun of me, I’ll leave”. That tells me he isn’t you’re typical dumb guy. But, too bad, that didn’t work either. It actually made the movie drag because it took away the opportunities to have the dumb guy do more dumb things.
“Joe Dirt” is a movie that got made because Adam Sandler’s production company is behind it, and because David Spade and Dennis Miller and people like Christopher Walken have parts in it. It would never have seen the light of day without them being involved because it is one stinking pile of crap. And it’s not one of those movies aimed at ten year old boys so somebody like me just doesn’t “get it”. I saw plenty of kids in the audience and they were not laughing much. “Joe Dirt” is just part of the trial and error process and this error will hopefully hit the garbage dumpster soon. Now we wait for the Chris Kattan movie and the Tom Green movie and Rob Schneider movie and so on. To “Joe Dirt” I give a “1.0”
Friday, April 6th, 2001
A few people asked me to see and review this movie. I don’t ordinarily do “requests”, but I was planning to go see it anyway and now I figure it’s time to review something a little out of the ordinary.
And “out of the ordinary” is putting it mildly. I guess I could start by saying this movie is about a guy seeking revenge for the rape and murder of his wife. Now that hardly seems out of the ordinary. But that would be saying very little about what this movie is really all about. Guy Pearce plays Lenny, the guy seeking revenge. But two things quickly jump out at you as you watch this movie which are way out the ordinary.
First, Lenny tells us he’s lost his short term memory. That is, he can remember everything in his life that happened up to the attack on his wife. After that, his life experiences hold for a while, then fade. Must be tough, right? Now, imagine trying to track your wife’s rapist-killer when you can’t remember stuff that happened five minutes ago or the day before or the day before that. That’s Lenny’s problem. Now here’s yours – this movie plays in reverse. No, not literally. But each scene is actually what happened after the scene that comes next. So the ending of the movie is the opening scene and we get the beginning of Lenny’s quest at the end of the movie. Tricky? Well, you get the hang of it after a few scenes, but it’s tiring. What do you like about a movie? If it’s to be challenged a bit, to have to follow the action closely, then this movie’s for you. Me, I was into it. I found myself constantly piecing the thing together like a strange puzzle. As a scene played out, I kept saying to myself, “okay, what happened after this I already saw and that was…”. Yeah, I got tired all right.
Lenny’s journey takes him through two other main characters. One is Teddy, who may or may not be helping him find the attacker. The other is a lady named Natalie, a bartender who may or may not also be helping Lenny. Considering the whole thing revolves around drugs and money, what do you think? Lenny tries to help himself remember things by taking Polaroid photos and writing notes on the back of them. He also tacks notes and maps up on a hotel room wall and tattoos phrases on his body. What a life! It’s up to you to play along and figure out what’s really going on here. The scenes are separated by a running black and white story of Lenny in his hotel room telling some of the story about the attack on his wife to a mysterious person on the other end of a telephone. He also tells the tale of a guy named Sammy Jankis. Sammy is someone Lenny once investigated as part of Lenny’s job with an insurance company. It seems Sammy had the same short-term memory loss problem that Lenny now has. We need these phone conversations to help explain some things.
I’ve heard some people want to see this movie a few times to see if they can pick up on some other things they may have missed (like “The Sixth Sense”). I think I got it but that doesn’t mean I’m brilliant. I talked to a few people who confirmed some of my interpretations. Of course, we could all be wrong. There are some scenes that are absolute masterpieces. One I can recall involves Lenny and Natalie and it happens just after Lenny attempts to help her. Well, sort of. Ah, you’ll know it when you see it. This movie is hard to review because you can easily give away things. And you know I don’t like doing that. “Memento” is one unique piece-by-piece mystery story with it’s own brand of twists. You’re not likely to have ever seen anything like it. But since it is a bit of a mental workout, I’m not sure it wasn’t trying too hard to be groundbreaking. I sometimes felt like I had to like because it’s “cool” to like this kind of a film. But, look closer – there are some flaws in the backwards storytelling. Well, nobody’s perfect. The movie has that “feel” that I think the crowd that loved “The Usual Suspects” or “The Crying Game” will get into. I give it a “7.0” on the scale, but add a point if you’re really into something you won’t see anywhere else.
