A breezy moviegoing experience, `Joe Dirt' is easy to tolerate
By JUDE SEYMOUR
Scene Movie Critic
The current fascination with the mullet hairdo has been propagating amongst college kids faster than the time it takes to sell N*SYNC tickets to young teenage girls.
"Mullet" is a slang term for a style of haircut in which the front half is short (or missing) and the back part is left flowing, long and often unkempt.
The mullet haircut has become associated with a group of people dubbed "white trash," which is a slang designation some use when they want to feel superior to those who are uneducated, live in trailers and watch NASCAR on Sundays.
"Joe Dirt" is the first movie to capitalize on this hair craze, with David Spade playing the mulleted lead character.
Joe is a janitor at radio station KXLA when an obnoxious D.J., Zander Kelly (Dennis Miller), invites him onto his show to tell his life story in a multi-part segment airing during the morning drive.
Joe tells how his parents abandoned him at the Grand Canyon at age 8, and how his search to find them lead to a friendship with the beautiful Brandy (Brittany Daniel) and run-ins with a hooligan, Robby (Kid Rock).
Zander's original intention was to make fun of Joe Dirt's "white trash" upbringing, but as the story unfolds Zander's sarcasm drops and the search for Joe's parents begins.
"Joe Dirt" is a comedy that sometimes forgets its place and slips into moments of unrealistic melodrama. When it's not tackling larger life issues such as love and family, though, it is quite entertaining.
As his adventures become ridiculously entertaining, Joe Dirt becomes a character you can laugh at and laugh with. The dialogue is by no means thought provoking, but it hits its marks in extended joke sequences, making the movie's 86 minutes easy to sit through.
Joe Dirt is not a stretch for an actor like David Spade, but it certainly provides a new character for his routine. Gone is the smarmy brainiac that dominated Spade's best known works.
Joe is someone who is humiliated and makes mistakes that exemplify his ineptitude. At the same time, he seems more like a caricature than a real person. His last name, Dirt, comes to symbolize any person who embodies the characteristics made fun of by this movie.
Perhaps Joe Dirt realizes his own commonness when he deliberately speaks of his fondness to slip an "e" on the end of his name so it sounds more elegant (it would be pronounced "dirt-chay").
"Joe Dirt" does not try to end by making some deep statement about life. Instead, its focus is to entertain, and it strings together good jokes about one type of person without reveling in it.
"Dirt's" conservative runtime suggests its producer understands how long a joke can be funny, and this awareness results in a piece that will make audiences laugh quite a lot.
--two and a half shamrocks (out of five)
All Scene Stories for Thursday, April 19, 2001
