Joe La Crasse

Before I saw this movie, I was turned off by all the negative reviews and the fact that it was a SNL spinoff. But I bought a used tape from my video store. Instead of war coverage and serious drama, this has become a ray of hope. Make no mistake, it ain't winning any Oscars. But the slapstick is funny, has great co-stars like Joe Don Baker and Chris Walken. It has a good plotline, a search for his family. It's a lot of laughs and fun for plebes at heart. Serious, deep people will be offended, but when we try to make humor serious and deep, we're in trouble.

I braced myself for yet another film with low grade humour, plenty of bodily function jokes and not enough plot to go around.

Well, 'Joe Dirt' has all that and more... but surprisingly it turned out to be not half bad.

Perhaps the day of the preview caught me in a particularly good mood, because this story of a white trash loser searching for his parents who left him for dead at the Grand Canyon when he was eight was relatively enjoyable entertainment.

The movie is told primarily in flashback; Joe stumbles into the studio of a radio disc jockey who coaxes out of him his incredible life story. In the process Joe Dirt becomes a media darling as his story of woe and misfortune is heard by an ever sympathetic audience.

This is another movie which relies on the gross and disgusting to get its laughs; dogs balls stuck to the front porch, being covered in excrement, blowing up atom bombs, consumed by alligators and much much more!

The movie works for the most part because of David Spade's affable loser Joe Dirt. He plays a character that is not a 100 miles away from his 'Just Shoot Me' personna - a loveable idiot. He goes through life having all these setbacks - but he still maintains his positive outlook.

The movie does lag a bit at the three quarters mark, but this is a minor quibble for a film that does what is sets out to with a lot more style than its lamentable cousins.

A whole lotta fun

6 out of 10.

For a typical low-brained Hollywood comedy of this era, it was a pretty nice film. Of course, few if any modern-day comedies are "family fare" and this one isn't either but the lead character is a gentle, harmless guy. David Spade is very entertaining as "Joe Dirt," a down-and-out nice guy (but not exactly pure, either) who tells his tale of trying to find his parents to sleazy disc jockey "Zander Kelly" (Dennis Miller). Brittany Daniel is an attractive, likable female lead.

It's a fast-moving hour-and-a-half. Some of the scenes are outrageous, such as a dog getting his - can I say this? - testicles stuck to the porch. Yes, it's good family fare!! Ha. Ha. No, really, this was a funny film and worth looking for if you need a laugh. I'm surprised there wasn't a sequel.

I'm giving this film 7 out of 10 on the fact that it has made me laugh and laugh again. I have films like the Godfather, Scarface, Shawshank Redemption and others in my DVD collection but I can tell you I have watched this film more than any of those. As others have said this film does what it sets out to do, make you laugh, and that it does and then some.

Its stupidity is great and the abuse that Joe (David Spade) receives is just fantastic. If you like watching a lovable loser get abused then this is the movie for you. Lots of laughs and memorable sayings, its a classic, 'Life a garden, dig it' and 'you can't have no in your heart' all coming from a white trash loser with a mullet who announces on the radio that he was 'jerkin his gherkin'makes for a laughfest. Highly recommended but don't expect to use your brain, juvenile amusement all the way. And Brittany Daniels as Joe love interest 'Brandy' is incredibly hot.

I'm no huge fan of David Spade and I tend to find the whole ex-SNL-star feature film genre lame and unfunny, but I happened to catch JOE DIRT while flipping through the channels yesterday afternoon and was intrigued enough to watch. And oddly enough I stayed intrigued for the next 90 minutes. The humor was crude, but rarely so much so as to turn me off, and the cast was very good (sure Dennis Miller was obnoxious, but isn't that his shtick?) but what surprised me the most was how caught up in the story I became. Sure it's farcical and impossible to take seriously, but for some reason I couldn't turn it off --- I kept hanging in there to see what would happen next. Even the slightly lame-ass ending didn't ruin things for me. I'd have to say JOE DIRT beats the crap out of similar, more favorably received movies like TOMMY BOY (which I found simply unbearable). Give it a chance.