DIRTY WORK RATING: 5 / 10 --> Not a good movie
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PLOT: Two life-long losers, who need $50,000 in a jiffy to save the life of their whore-loving Pops, start a business in the only service in which they consider themselves to be experts: Revenge-for-hire!
CRITIQUE: This film stars a man whose humor I've always found to be funny, Norm McDonald. It's also peppered with plenty of other comedian cameos, an interesting premise, but unfortunately, doesn't deliver as many laughs as you might expect. Is it because "America's Funniest Videos" host Bob Saget is at the helm? I doubt it. He's actually much funnier in real life than any of his corny lines from the show might indicate.
And in that respect, this film is actually mined with a lot of dry, sarcastic humor and plenty of Normisms (He likes to mention crack, anal sex and whores a lot!). But overall, it just seemed to lack any real interest in their phony plight, and didn't provide enough good jokes to sustain anything more than a half hour TV program. Of all the cameos, I thought the Don Rickles one was the best, while Chris Farley deserved much more than his two-bit stint. So if you don't go into this film expecting a laugh-out riot, you might just be slightly entertained by a self-conscious Norm McDonald basically playing himself. On the other hand, it goes without saying that if you never enjoyed the man's humor in the first place, you will not appreciate this movie either. Real fans only. Overall, an inferior hit-and-miss SNL sketch gone long.
Little Known Facts about this film and its stars: Norm McDonald is born in my hometown of Montreal, Canada. Most of this film was shot in Toronto, Canada. Chris Farley's bother Kevin plays one of the theatre workers in this film. Co-screenwriter Fred Wolf also plays one of the homeless guys. He wrote Chris Farley's 1996 film BLACK SHEEP and was an uncredited writer on his 1995 film TOMMY BOY. Cameos in this film include Adam Sandler, Gary Coleman, John Goodman, Rebecca Romjin-Stamos, Dini Petty and Chevy Chase. This film is only 81 minutes long, and contains outtakes during the final credits.
Review Date: September 15, 1999
Director: Bob Saget
Writers: Frank Sebastiano, Norm McDonald and Fred Wolf
Producer: Robert Simonds
Actors: Norm McDonald as Mitch
Artie Lange as Sam
Jack Warden as Pops
Genre: Comedy
Year of Release: 1998
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(c) 1999 Berge Garabedian
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