"Joe Dirt" is No Heroic Comedy

by Jason Zingale
For the Post

From the people who presented The Waterboy and Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, comes a new comedy, Joe Dirt.

Saturday Night Live alum David Spade stars as the title character, Joe Dirt, a poster child for the self-described white-trash aesthetic.

Sporting a mullet, driving a beat-up muscle car and listening to the likes of AC/DC, Def Leppard and Van Halen, Joe's saga is told in a series of flashbacks via a radio interview with popular DJ Zander Kelly (Dennis Miller).

It seems Joe's been trying to track down the parents who abandoned him at the Grand Canyon when he was eight years old. Since then, he's led a lonely life, his only friend being a sweet country girl named Brandy (Brittany Daniel). Desperately needing closure of his abandonment issues, Joe embarks on a cross-country odyssey, encountering misadventures by just about everyone he meets, except a Native American named Kicking Wing (Adam Beach) and a Mafiosi in the witness protection program, Clem (Christopher Walken). Soon, Zander and the world are enthralled as Joe talks about the years-long adventures to find his parents.

Although the film has a relatively weak plot, it builds a pretty good character around Spade, something unusual in other SNL spin-offs. Viewing the story as more of a tragedy, Spade is able to turn it into a much more sympathetic movie by the end, maturing over such jokes as helping a dog free his frozen testicles from a front porch.

Another plus of the film is its supporting characters, like Walken's Clem, as well as Kid Rock's surprisingly good cameo. Walken, who probably seems psychotic when he's brushing his teeth, turns up as a buddy of Joe's, giving a performance almost as bizarre as the tap dancing act he does in the new video for Fatboy Slim's Weapon of Choice. Kid Rock, on the other hand, plays his white-trash character to a T, looking quite comfortable on-screen and actually acting well.

The biggest gap with the film is the longing for Spade to verbally tear up his opponents as he does on Just Shoot Me or as he did in his partnership with Chris Farley. It doesn't happen in Joe Dirt, meaning very little genuinely funny stuff happens.

Overall, Joe Dirt rounds up a weak plot. It then is served to the 10- to 17-year-old male crowd. Although a probable waste of time for anyone else, it is still a hauntingly curious movie to just go and see. If you have only four bucks to spend the whole weekend, wait for it to come out on video and split the cost with a friend.