| Reviewer Roundup |
| 1. |
 | Dustin Putman |
| review follows |
|   |
| 2. |
| Steve Rhodes |
| read the review |
| |
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Review by Dustin Putman
1½ stars out of 4
"Joe Dirt" is woefully unfunny. Directed by television alum Dennie Gordon (in
his feature film debut) and executive-produced by Adam Sandler, it is another
halfhearted attempt to inundate audiences with bathroom humor and dog-humping
jokes. The only problem is, these jokes are, by now, getting moldier than
three-month-old bread, and it has a watered-down PG-13 rating. Every physical
joke and every line of dialogue that is supposed to be humorous are both
predictable and boring. I didn't laugh, or lightly chuckle, or even smile,
once throughout the duration of "Joe Dirt," and it takes a really, really bad
comedy to achieve such a dubious feat.
Joe Dirt (David Spade) is a radio station janitor in Los Angeles with a
cheesy mullet hairdo straight out of the '70s. Living in the building's
boiler room, lightning strikes one day when he finds himself on the air with
"tell-it-like-it-is" radio personality Zander Kelly (Dennis Miller),
unspinning his fascinating life story, from the moment when he was abandoned
by his trailer trash parents at the Grand Canyon when he was eight, up until
the present day, circa twenty years later. Passed along from one wacky foster
family to the next as a child, Joe has spent his adult years desperately
searching for the whereabouts of his parents, who have seemingly vanished
into thin air. Amidst it all, he lost touch with the one person who ever
really cared about him, Brandy (Brittany Daniel), a fetching young woman who
is about to marry the oily Robby (Kid Rock) by default.
An uninspired road-movie-cum-love-story, "Joe Dirt" leaps from one comic
setup to the next, without any actual care for the story at hand, or the fact
that the comedy is D.O.A. David Spade (1999's "Lost & Found"), who also acts
as co-writer to the episodic screenplay, can be a charming performer, but he
tries too hard here to be like fellow comedians Adam Sandler and Rob
Schneider. In the process, he flounders in a story that would be above the
most listless actor in Hollywood.
Cameos are prevalent, perhaps to make up for the lacking material, as they
include everyone from Christopher Walken (what is he doing her?), to rapper
Kid Rock, to Rosanna Arquette. The only person who permeates any sort of
cinematic screen presence is Brittany Daniel (a former recurring actor on
TV's "Dawson's Creek"), as the sweet Brandy, who makes for an attractive love
interest. Daniel's scenes, and one admittedly clever vignette in which Joe is
captured and put into a well by a cross-dressing serial killer with a
white-haired poodle, a 'la "The Silence of the Lambs," are the only elements
that raise "Joe Dirt" above being utterly worthless. The classic rock
soundtrack, including Blue Oyster Cult's "Burnin' for You" and Bachman
Turner-Overdrive's "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet," isn't bad, either.
There are so many things wrong with "Joe Dirt," however, that these passing
bright spots are only cause for cursory interest. The whole of the film is
birdbrained and silly, and doesn't work for a second. Likewise, director
Dennie Gordon shows no flair for filmmaking, unable to set up even the most
simple jokes for an acceptable payoff. "Joe Dirt" aspires to be the next
"Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo" or "Dumb & Dumber," but it ends up landing
closer in quality to "Billy Madison" and "Black Sheep."
Copyright © 2001 Dustin Putman
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out of 4
