As one would expect, make that desire, nay,
demand from a movie bearing such a title, David Spade’s 2001 offering
Joe Dirt is defiantly lowbrow and scuzzy. And yet it’s also funny, one of the diminutive former
Saturday Night Live
star’s best solo screen offerings. If that’s a somewhat dubious
distinction, so be it. But if you also enjoy Spade in small doses
courtesy of his supporting work on everything from
Just Shoot Me to
8 Simple Rules…,
yet have never sampled of his screen wares outside of his
collaborations with the late Chris Farley, this is probably as fine a
place as any to start, certainly better than 1999’s
Lost & Found.
Spade
stars as the eponymous, ridiculous mullet-sporting embodiment of every
trailer trash joke known to humankind, a man-child abandoned by his
parents at the Grand Canyon when he was little who’s had to fend for
himself ever since. He does this chiefly by befriending a fallen
meteorite and debasing himself through a variety of low-paying, menial
jobs, but against considerable odds Joe also strikes up a friendship
with the smokin’ hot Brandy (
the smokin’ hot Brittany Daniel), though
he eventually leaves her because he thinks he’s not good enough for
her. Utilizing a flashback structure in which Joe relays his life story
to a bemused Los Angeles drive-time disc jockey (Dennis Miller) who
holds him up to (oblivious) ridicule, Joe becomes an unlikely cause
célèbre and finally tracks down his long-lost mom and dad.
Needless to say, Joe Dirt’s particular brand of comedy went
over like an I-Roc full of bricks overseas, where it grossed less than
one-tenth of its $30 box office haul,
and it likely will do the same to
dyed-in-their-wool Blue Staters who’ve never escaped an airport
terminal between New York, Boston and Los Angeles. But there’s a real
sense of heart to the humor here, as well as heartening amount of
detail that helps create a healthy and convincing backdrop. Co-written
by Spade and Fred Wolf, and directed by Dennie Gordon (a skilled
episodic television vet with the features
What a Girl Wants and
New York Minute
also unfortunately to her credit), the film plays up Joe’s never-quit
spirit, making for a real loser for whom you can root. A plethora of
friendly cameos (including Christopher Walken as a whacked-out janitor
and Kid Rock as a romantic rival) and comedic asides fit relatively
neatly into the narrative, with
only a bit nipped from The Silence of the Lambs
involving a psychotic serial killer of questionable sexual orientation
(Brian Thompson) seeming too much of a conceit-butchering stretch.
Housed in a regular Amray case,
Joe Dirt gives viewers the
option of either 1.33:1 full screen or 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen
exhibition, the latter preserving the aspect ratio of its original
theatrical release.
There’s an audio-commentary track with director
Gordon, but the real attraction is Spade’s parallel, solo,
feature-length track, wherein he recounts the movie’s 36-day shoot, on
a summer hiatus from Just Shoot Me, with both remarkable
clarity and self-deprecation. He talks about his “Billy Ray
Cyrus-gone-wrong” mullet wig, details trims made to ensure a PG-13
rating and notes, during a quasi-emotional beat, “the crew unanimously
voted that I not act in the movie.”
Spade also talks a good bit about
the music in Joe Dirt, and how irked he was that a key song
written into the script two years prior to production was ripped away
because it was wanted on a whim for the higher-profile Charlie’s Angels.
Other supplemental extras include seven deleted and alternate scenes
(three with commentary from Gordon), theatrical trailers, production
notes, cast filmographies and a three-minute blooper and outtake reel
involving an adlibbed joke about Pop-Tarts and maxi pads and Dennis
Miller continuously flubbing a line before pronouncing that he’s tired
of “the screenplay by Rubik.”
Joe Dirt doesn’t need “churching up,” it’s just fine as is — lowbrow and proud of it.
B- (Movie) B- (Disc) 
