Dirty Love

After watching DIRTY LOVE, a friend and I had a discussion about what makes a comedy like this work and why DIRTY LOVE failed so miserably in comparison to a film like DUMB & DUMBER. Both films include characters that are stupid idiots who fart, pee, and generally act in an obscene and vulgar manner, but DUMB & DUMBER is undeniably the better and funnier film of the two (even people who loath DUMB & DUMBER would certainly agree on this point). Why? The answer we came up with is that it has to do with the human element of comedy. When there is no humanity to be seen in the characters, the audience finds it difficult to identify with the improbable situation the characters find themselves in. There is a big difference between seeing Jenny McCarthy wallow in a puddle made of her own menstrual blood for no reason except to degrade her character even further than she already has been degraded and a scene in DUMB & DUMBER in which Jim Carrey accidentally kills one of the last two of a certain kind of owl in the world. The DUMB & DUMBER example, crude as it is, is a comment on society and the values of the characters and also was an expertly set up and executed joke. DIRTY LOVE's supermarket scene is just embarrassing.

This unbelievably awful film was awarded the Razzie Award for the worst movie of 2005, and it's awfully hard to disagree with the decision. It is a shameless monument to McCarthy's ego, as her badly written screenplay is designed exclusively to provide a showcase for her tiresome brand of toilet humor and self indulgent mugging that makes Jerry Lewis look restrained by comparison.

But as bad as McCarthy's script and performance are, she isn't helped by then-husband John Mallory Asher's heavy-handed direction or Eric Wycoff's brutal cinematography, with unforgivingly harsh lighting that shows off every imperfection in the actors' faces and robs McCarthy and Carmen Electra their usual saving grace as eye candy.

The most remarkable scene was McCarthy at a grocery store buying tampons when her period kicks in. She starts running through the store leaving a dripping trail of menstrual fluid, which ultimately becomes a massive pond of the stuff that she slips in and is finally covered by. It wasn't the least bit funny and quite sickeningly tasteless.

The cast is uniformly awful, with the lone exception of Eddie Kaye Thomas as the plain fellow who is devoted to McCarthy. He steals the film with the sole characterization that doesn't descend into cartoonish self indulgence. Of course with a movie like "Dirty Love," that can be considered petty theft.

But the price of admission was worth the DVD audio commentary by McCarthy and Asher (who comes off as a clueless fool who was a periphery character on the set), one of the most outlandish displays of narcissism and self-delusion I was ever witnessed. They were constantly congratulating themselves on their own brilliance, and oblivious to the fact that the movie was a god-awful mess. The funniest part was three minutes before the film ended, McCarthy announced that she had another appointment and actually walked out of the taping to let her husband finish up! He had nothing to say except to reiterate how brilliant Jenny was, a conclusion that the vast majority of viewers of "Dirty Love" will disagree with.

Dirty Love is truly the worst film I have seen so far in my 27 years on this planet.

Everyone involved in the creative process of the film should never be allowed to work in the industry ever again. I feel as if I have been robbed of 90 minutes of my life. I sat through the whole film on the odd chance that it might get better but unfortunately it just got worse. I did laugh at several points throughout the movie, but these were at the quality of the acting or the stupidity of the storyline.

Given the choice of either a repeat viewing or having my fingernails slowly ripped off, one by one,without painkillers whist listening to Kenny G, I would choose the latter.

i cant even begin to describe how bad this movie is. its so bad, its almost laughable, but then it descends into some truly horrible moments and instead of laughing you cringe. the supermarket scene was one. but its so much worse than that, its literally every moment where she thinks she is being funny. knowing that she thinks that she is funny makes watching this even worse. she never should have left MTV. here i am trying to write a review for a terrible movie and i need 10 lines. its so bad i cant even fill up the required text limit. OK think of this. think of a movie about a hot blonde with a great body, but instead of a woman being in it, its a really your stupid kid brother that like fart jokes and toe cheese. horrible horrible horrible horrible.

Dirty Love (2005)

BOMB (out of 4)

After reading Ebert's "No Star" review and seeing him rank this as the third worst movie of 2005, I just had to try it out for myself. Not only is this the worst film I've seen from 2005 but I'd also go as far as to say this is the most embarrassing piece of trash I've seen from a known actress. Jenny McCarthy catches her boyfriend banging another chick so she has a nervous breakdown while trying to find another guy. Everything in this film from the horrid direction to the horrid acting is downright bad but it tries to set itself apart with some disgusting humor. This humor includes McCarthy having her period in a supermarket and the blood leaking all over the place, people slipping in it and so on. McCarthy wrote the screenplay, which is quite bad and it's rather sad to see how far she went to embarrass herself. A horrible movie that isn't even worth the scene where McCarthy shows off her breast.