Themes: Wanderlust, Obsessive Quests, Haunted By the Past
Main Cast: Joe Don Baker, David Spade, Dennis Miller, Brittany Daniel, Kid Rock, Adam Beach, Jaime Pressly, Christopher Walken
Release Year: 2001
Country: US
Run Time: 90 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG13
Plot
As the title character of Joe Dirt, David Spade plays a "white trash" janitor at an L.A. radio station, whose mullet hairdo is just one of many personal oddities that make him the object of much ridicule. And the sanitation gig is just the most recent of Joe's many incarnations during a tumultuous life, which got off on the wrong foot when Joe was abandoned at the Grand Canyon by his parents as a young child. After stumbling into the on-air studio, Joe steadily recounts the sad and comical story of how he cared for himself and journeyed around the country trying to relocate his family, all while being prodded, teased, and eventually embraced by a sarcastic deejay (Dennis Miller) and a rapt listening audience. His travels involve stints selling fireworks, wrangling alligators, riding aloft in a car dealership display balloon, and being held captive by a Silence of the Lambs-style serial killer. Despite numerous setbacks and bruising physical injuries, Joe emerges from each episode with his spirit intact as he searches optimistically for his roots, and eventually for the chance to return to the one place he was accepted -- a rural farm where the girl of his dreams (Brittany Daniel) awaits. The directorial debut of Dennie Gordon, Joe Dirt was produced by Adam Sandler's production company, Happy Madison, and features musician Kid Rock, also debuting, in the supporting role of Joe's rival. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
Review
With Joe Dirt, producer Adam Sandler continues to prove his proclivity toward comedies named after the main character (Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, Deuce Bigalow), and more than ever before, that he's got influence with an array of name actors willing to supply cameos and play down to the material. This last quality doesn't make Joe Dirt a good movie, but it does lend it a certain legitimacy by affiliation, enough so that it falls into the generous category of "better than it could have been." In addition to the usual cast of SNL collaborators, Joe Dirt features the game cooperation of Christopher Walken, Fred Ward, Rosanna Arquette, and Joe Don Baker, among others. David Spade is okay in the title role, but he's basically miscast, having woven a career of pipsqueak bullying marked by sarcastic retorts and insults. He looks less comfortable as the one who gets insulted, no matter how much he may yearn for a career makeover as the sensitive and sympathetic hero who gets the girl. The film offers some brisk and mindless charm functioning as a sort of Homer's Odyssey for morons, but only a couple of the episodes are even worth smiling about, with the lion's share consisting of uninspired slapstick centered around doodoo and food fights. There's not all that much to like in Joe Dirt, but it's hardly worth hating, either. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
Alan Au - Art Director, Roger Mussenden - Casting, Ira Shuman - Co-producer, Alexandra Welker - Costume Designer, Marty Eli Schwartz - First Assistant Director, Rip Murray - First Assistant Director, Dennie Gordon - Director, Peck Prior - Editor, Adam Sandler - Executive Producer, Jack Giarraputo - Executive Producer, Waddy Wachtel - Composer (Music Score), Michael Dilbeck - Musical Direction/Supervision, Perry Andelin Blake - Production Designer, John Leonetti - Cinematographer, Robert Simonds - Producer, Evette Knight - Set Designer, Domenic Silvestri - Set Designer, Richard Lightstone - Sound/Sound Designer, David Kelson - Sound/Sound Designer, David Spade - Screenwriter, Fred Wolf - Screenwriter, Rip Murray - Second Assistant Director, Paula Fairfield - Supervising Sound Editor, Elmo Weber - Supervising Sound Editor, Evette Knight - Set Decorator
The film opens at a Los Angeles radio station, where Joe Dirt (David Spade) works as a janitor and lives in a boiler room. When a producer at the radio station discovers Joe getting bullied in the hallway, the producer finds Joe's natural white trashiness too impossible to be believed, and insists he be brought into the studio to talk live on the air with a disc jockey named Zander Kelly (Dennis Miller). The bulk of the movie consists of Joe recounting his life story in flashbacks to Zander who, along with the audience, seeks laughs at Joe's expense. Joe's life story begins with him being abandoned at the Grand Canyon at the age of eight. After growing up in a series of bizarre foster homes, Joe finds himself living in the town of Silvertown, Idaho, where he pursues a love interest named Brandy (Brittany Daniel), while evading a bully named Robby (Kid Rock).
After a bizarre twists of events leads to the death of Brandy's dog, a reflective Joe feels the need to seek out his estranged parents. The search for his parents leads Joe on a series of adventures, meeting colorful characters and working odd jobs. Joe narrowly escapes death when thrown in the hole and forced to "put on the lotion", by Buffalo Bob (Brian Thompson). Eventually Joe lands his janitorial job at the radio station where he recounts how, at one point, how he decided to give up the search and return to Silvertown to be with Brandy. When he got there, Robby informed him that Brandy found Joe's parents, but instructed Robby not to tell Joe. Robby produced a note from Brandy to prove it. Hearing this, Zander insists on getting Brandy on the phone to find out why she did this. Brandy admits to writing the note to Robby. She did it because she wanted to tell Joe in person, but never had the opportunity. Brandy goes on to tell Joe that his parents were killed the day they were at the Grand Canyon and pleads with Joe to come back to Silvertown.
Joe is unaware that recounting his story on the radio has won the hearts of listeners and made him a media sensation. The media exposure results in a phone call from a woman claiming to be Joe's mother. Joe goes to meet her, but is disappointed to discover that his parents (Fred Ward and Caroline Aaron) are really just using Joe's publicity to help sell clown figurines. When asked how they could simply abandon him at the Grand Canyon, Joe's father replies "How exactly does the posi-trac rear end on a Plymouth work? It just does!" Depressed, Joe goes to a bridge to commit suicide, but Brandy appears and says that she only told Joe his parents were dead to protect him when she found out what horrible people they were. A policeman tosses a bungee jumping cord around Joe to stop him from jumping, but inadvertently pushes Joe over the edge. The bungee cord breaks Joe's fall, but as Joe bounces back upward, he hits his head on the bridge and is knocked unconscious. Joe wakes up in Brandy's house, surrounded by Brandy and other friends he has met on his journey. He realizes they are like a family to him. With his new family, and car out of hock, he rides off in the firework sunset.
The film's critical reception has been generally negative. The film has an average rating of 3 out of 10 with an 11% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes.[2]
Ebert and Roeper both gave the film a thumbs down. Richard Roeper called the comedy for being predictable and strained, and said that the radio station storyline was absurd. Roger Ebert agreed, but praised Spade for taking on a different role than he is normally associated with, and added that Spade's performance was convincing, despite the film's other shortcomings.[3]
Despite the poor reviews, the film did earn 27 million dollars in the US, surpassing its 16 million dollar budget[4]. On the DVD commentary, Spade states that at the time of recording, Joe Dirt is the number one film in New Zealand, and jokingly adds "It's a country the size of K-Mart, but we'll take it".
Joe Dirt has frequently been a topic of discussion on Miller's real-life radio show, and he has actually interviewed Spade on the show.
The second verse of "Weird Al" Yankovic's Close but No Cigar from his album Straight Outta Lynwood contains the lyrics "I thought after all these years of searching around, I'd found my soulmate finally/But one day I found out she actually owned a copy of Joe Dirt on DVD..."
References
^ Dirt's character was loosely based on David Spade's childhood friend, Mitchell Brunton.
