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”