# Dirty Work (1998)

### reviewed by
James Sanford

There are many questions we should ponder during our daily meditations. What does God look like? Why do good people suffer while bad people sometimes prosper? Why is there air? And why, after all these years, does Hollywood think that everyone who ever appeared on "Saturday Night Live" deserves a film career as a reward? Sure, there's Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy and Bill Murray, who've made some truly funny movies over the years, but they're genuinely talented. What's the excuse for showcasing Norm Macdonald, a third-rate Dennis Miller knockoff whose delivery is slower than Priority Mail? Macdonald is currently best-known for his public feud with NBC and for a recent college gig in which he allegedly went onstage plastered and offended most of the audience. Too bad "Dirty Work," his starring debut, won't even generate that much of a reaction. It's certainly not the worst film by an "SNL" alumni, and every so often - maybe twice in the course of its 81 minutes and 27 seconds - "Dirty" works in a clever idea. But for the most part, it plods along, throwing in a surprise cameo here, a horny senior-citizen gag there, until it's time to call it a night. Underscoring the action with last year's hits (Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life," Chumbawamba's "Tubthumping," etc.) only plunges the movie deeper into the doldrums. The sole zinger in the script goes to Don Rickles, playing the surly cinema manager who accurately tells usher Macdonald, "You have the personality of a dead moth." Despite featuring the most colorful costumes of any movie so far this year, "Dirty" is mostly dull. Mitch Weaver (Macdonald) is a ne'er-do-well who's had 14 jobs in the past three months before he seizes on the idea of opening a revenge-for-hire business (yes, the filmmakers put AC/DC's "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" on the soundtrack). With partner Sam (Artie Lange), Weaver struggles to come up with the $50,000 needed to buy a new heart for Sam's dying dad (Jack Warden). But the guys work much too hard, putting whole dead fish throughout a house to render it uninhabitable. All you really need to do is get a couple of pints of fish oil and pour it in the air ducts, the sofa cushions and the mattress. Not that I'd know personally, or anything. Some mild curiosity may be generated by one final appearance by the late Chris Farley, as the hard-drinking victim of a partial nose amputation. Sadly, Farley looks much worse than the role requires and watching his few scenes feels like ghoulish voyeurism.

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