You know how there are movies that seem to be good ideas on paper but turn out lousy, and those movies you wonder how in God's Green Earth became green-lit to get made, this movie is both. Based along the lines of "Kentucky Fired Movie," "Dirty Movie" is nothing but a string of obscene and demented characters acting out the dirty jokes your acid-baked dumb-ass former friends used to tell in school. Basically "The Benny Hill Show" on acid, except without the humor, clever one-liners or the witty repartee, the movie is a string of obscene material and tasteless dialogue interspersed with scenes of an extremely low-budget film company trying to make a movie with nothing but jokes which get worse and even more controversial as it continues. It doesn't push the envelope; it ignores it completely. The movie fails to realize the difference between dirty jokes and offensive jokes; dirty jokes are basically humor directed at misunderstandings of human vices and stigmas, such as drinking and sex. Offensive jokes are purposely based on ignorance and intolerance and directly aimed at religious, cultural and ethnic groups. The vignettes of the filmmaking crew are the only partially interesting thing about the film; especially as the creators debate between art and sensationalism. Christopher Meloni of "Law & Order" plays a typical despicable director, a man completely without morals, humanity or any redeeming human qualities, joined by Robert Klein as the equally emotionally-deficient producer and Cyndi Lauper as a mom in a few sketches. The only thing interesting about the fake sketches is that as they go on, it starts becoming noticeable that even they seem to share a loose storyline of characters with a male bartender playing straight man, a cute female bartender delivering lines to drunks, a psychotic young boy (Cyndi's boy), a demented and unprofessional physician, some stoned redneck farmers and a mad priest among others. The nudity is confined to more than a few bare breast shots; a few of the women are actually attractive (one particularly homely one turns out in the commentary to be a pseudo-famous female impersonator), but the movie is so focused on indecency and immorality that they're reduced to set dressing than plot points. Like I said, the only interesting parts of the movie are the internal debates on what constitutes obscene material and just what it is willing to do or not do, but most of the time, the movie just drags its feet across the line for no purpose at all but to be shocking. Ignore trying to be funny, the film wants to appall and disgust. (Worse yet, there are adolescent kids in some of the scenes.) Bottom line: the only people who might appreciate this film are stoners, drunks and immature college students.
Review of Dirty Movie
