DIRTY WORK A film review by Andrew Hicks Copyright 1998 Andrew Hicks
(1998) **1/2 (out of four)
Some nights during the latest dark period of "Saturday Night Live," I turned on the show and was surprised to find myself actually laughing. Nine times out of ten, that surprise laughter came from something Norm Macdonald said. Like no one else, Macdonald can make me laugh by saying a single word, no matter how many times he says it. If any other comedian repeatedly milked words like "crack," "anal rape" and "whore" for laughs, I'd find it absolutely unfunny.
There's something about his delivery that can give value to the most mediocre writing. I don't know exactly what that is, but DIRTY WORK would suck without it. Lines that would make me cringe in other summer comedies made me laugh this time, and almost make me recommend the movie. Had the movie occasionally included a half-intelligent joke in its parade of scatalogical and sexual innuendo humor, and had the movie not allowed Macdonald's character to be gang raped in jail, I would have given it a full thumbs-up.
As it is, DIRTY WORK is the most politically incorrect movie of the year to date, the kind of movie that has multiple punchlines involving prostitutes, incest and dirty old men. It's one dirty old man (Jack Warden, still recovering from those PROBLEM CHILD movies) in particular that provides most of the plot for the movie. Warden plays the father of Macdonald's best friend and, in a span of a few minutes, Warden has a heart attack and tells Macdonald he's also his father.
If that weren't enough plot contrivance, the doctor (Chevy Chase) tells Macdonald that Warden's only hope for survival is a heart transplant. Since Chase owes $50,000 to a bookie, he sets the price for a transplant at exactly that amount... and we all know Chase is in dire need of $50,000 right about now. Meanwhile, Macdonald and his best friend ponder what they could possibly do to earn that kind of money in two weeks' time.
They get jobs at a theater run by Don Rickles, whose cameo isn't nearly as funny or politically incorrect as the rest of the movie. Rickles' drill sergeant approach to movie theater management prompts Macdonald and his friend to get back at him, which the other employees offer them money to do. A little bell goes off in their heads -- they can make money getting paid to perform revenge on other people. There are plenty of revenge scenes in the movie, some of them funny, a lot of them not, but with Macdonald at the helm, he managed to pull a laugh out of me every time I thought I was going to regret coming to see this.
Not that DIRTY WORK is a classy or original movie by any stretch of the imagination. The plot is ridiculous and predictable, involving a local land baron (Christopher McDonald, still recovering from that LEAVE IT TO BEAVER movie) who hires them to destroy the same building that happens to be inhabited by the grandmother of a woman Norm has a crush on. Things begin looking bleak for our protagonists around the two-thirds mark, as they tend to do in generic comedies, but there's never any doubt things will end happily.
A word for those of you who will no doubt complain that I gave DIRTY WORK the same rating as a classier **1/2 movie of your choice -- this is a tasteless movie without any socially redeeming qualities. It is, however, funny. Macdonald brings all his "Weekend Update" charm to the big screen, although I found myself constantly wishing he'd drop that "Note to self" gag. It never worked on "SNL" and, even worse, it turned out to be part of the plot here.
Those of you who have seen other movies starring "SNL" cast members know that none of them can have just one "Saturday Night Live" person. The parade starts with Chevy Chase and continues with an Adam Sandler cameo and a running appearance from Chris Farley, in one of his final appearances. DIRTY WORK is more entertainment than you'll get most Saturday nights around 11:30/10:30 central.
Visit the Movie Critic at Large homepage at http://www.missouri.edu/~c667778/movies.html
Close to 1,000 reviews with a comedic flair...
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews