# Dirty Work (1998)

### reviewed by
Serdar Yegulalp

    Dirty Work
    1/2 *
    A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp
    (C) 1998 by Serdar Yegulalp

So far, I have personally seen more genuinely terrible and unwatchable movies in 1998 than in any other year in recent memory. DIRTY WORK bellyflops squarely onto the end of that astonishing string of stinkers. Not only was it not screened for critics, but when trailers for the movie rolled two months ago (ours was appended to GODZILLA), people walked out of the theater to wait for it to end.

DIRTY WORK is offensive in the worst possible way: it's stupid AND incompetent. The film's basic premise has potential: Norm MacDonald (late of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE) plays a schlub who, in an attempt to raise money for his father's heart transplant, starts a revenge-for-hire service. There! With that concept in mind, sit down and write as many things you can think of that might appear in a comedy about this subject. I'll bet my 401K fund that not only do none of them appear in this movie, but that everything you wrote down is guaranteed to be funnier than anything that happens on screen. The film is a wretched parade of cheap shots at fat people, gays ("Keep your distance, Liberace," one of the characters says after a too-intimate embrace), and anyone else who wasn't in the room when they scrawled the script on the back of a gum wrapper.

It's absolutely amazing. I racked my brains trying to remember a single funny moment in this movie. There isn't one. Usually a movie will have SOMETHING that at least makes you snicker, even if it's not deliberate. This movie is a desert, seconded only by SOUR GRAPES so far as the worst movie of the year. Matters aren't helped by the static direction (Bob Saget, of AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS) or MacDonald's dead delivery. He seems to think that just because he could get laughs reading "Weekend Update" in a smiling monotone, he can do the same with everything else he gets handed.

There is a little crew of amateur filmmakers who call themselves Random Foo Productions. They've even got their own web site (www.randomfoo.com). I've seen several of their homebrew movies already, and for a bunch of kids with an operating budget that's probably less than what it costs to chauffeur a big-name director to the airport, they are enormous fun.

Why do I mention them here? Draw your own conclusions.

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