Joe Dirt
Starring: David Spade, Brittany Daniel, Kid Rock
Directed by: Dennie Gordon Playing at: The Galleria

by Dan Carlin

Something is wrong when a movie makes you long for the wit and intelligence of Dumb and Dumber. Remarkably, such is the case with the latest David Spade vehicle, Joe Dirt. In his latest SNL-related flop, Spade portrays Dirt, a white trash relic who still thinks that mullets, Judas Priest, and acid-washed jeans are at the height of fashion. While the movie never much surpasses the neanderthal level in its intelligence, it features a dazzling array of bad haircuts, revolting mishaps, and jokes that fall flat on their ugly faces.
Abandoned by his parents during a trip to the Grand Canyon, Dirt has since become a janitor at a Los Angeles radio station, living in a storage room next to the men’s room. One day, a bemused producer brings Dirt to radio host Zander Kelly (Dennis Miller) during a show, and Dirt soon begins telling a remarkable epic of love, loss and the resilient American spirit.
After being orphaned, Dirt wandered around the state scraping for food and shelter. Eventually he met and settled down with Brandy, a beautiful young vixen who took to Joe after he detached her dog’s genitals from an icy porch. Of course, Joe fails to notice Brandy’s growing feelings for him and he leaves her to find his parents, obstructing his destiny.
The ensuing action follows Joe as he travels around the country, taking part in inane mishaps and encountering excrement in all of it forms.
The humor in Joe Dirt admittedly has Farrely brothers style potential, but mostly fails simply because it is so condescending. When Joe calmly explains to Zander that his facial hair naturally grows as Elvis mutton chops, a mustache and a goatee, the joke is killed as Zander repeats the obvious “so you’re telling me, your facial hair naturally grows in white trash style?” Similarly, most of the other humor beats you over the head until it isn’t funny.
While Miller kills every scene he’s in, Christopher Walken has a great, refreshing cameo as “Clem,” a mobster hiding under the Witness Protection Program. With his confused, distraught talk and his empty, inscrutable stare, Walken finally gives us something quirky and interesting, in contrast to the sandbag-heavy laughs that characterize the rest of the story. Sadly, this is only a blip of intelligence in a sea of idiocy.
The bulk of the movie features such “instant classic” bathroom humor gags as Joe being covered with excrement, Joe eating off of a frozen ball of excrement (which he thought was a meteorite), and Joe getting an extended hug from an ambiguously gay Native American.
Eventually, Joe does become a somewhat endearing character; just as his persistence in trying to find his family eventually succeeds (if with a big caveat,) so the persistence of the filmmakers ultimately succeeds in making Joe Dirt into a hero (albeit a moronic and hideous one). His imperviousness to the customs and evils of the outside world make him ridiculous but likeable.
Through the radio show, Joe becomes a hero to thousands of listeners who see him as an embodiment of the American spirit, and his face soon appears on the cover of magazines and newspapers. Thinking of another prominent two-syllable hero, Joe’s popularity could be a reference to the recently expressed love for the everyman, complete with his grammatical, intellectual and stylistic deficiencies. Heck, maybe if Joe ran for office, he’d get nearly a plurality of the vote too.

*1/2

Memento
Starring: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano
Directed by: Christopher Nolan Playing at: The Tivoli

by Dave Clary

I’ve known a fair amount of psychology majors in my time, as I’m sure many people here do, and one thing has always been true of those people (particularly those who were not actually planning on being psychologists): they really looked forward to abnormal psych. And who could blame them, right? I mean, that’s the class where you get to learn about the freakishness inherent and lying (in wait) in each and every human brain. But the best part is learning about the accidents, like the guy who went from a nice guy to a devious sociopath after a railroad tie went through his head. Of course, I’d be a bit cranky too, if I had a railroad tie embedded in my skull.
But I digress. The point is that there is a condition called anterograde amnesia, which causes the sufferer to become unable to convert short-term memory into long-term memory. Basically, you can’t remember anything before a few minutes ago. And, until now, no one had thought to make a movie about this (with the exception of Tom Twyker’s Winter Sleepers).
Memento, at its core, is a noirish mystery/thriller; in the Hitchcock tradition. Its central figure, Leonard Shelby, suffers from this rare condition, and that makes all the difference. Leonard’s trials began the night two men broke into his apartment, raped and murdered his wife. He got one of them, but the other jumped him, causing the head wound that leaves him unable to remember anything. His quest, and the mystery at the center of the plot, is his search for “John G,” the man who killed his wife and took his memory.
It sounds simple enough, and from a story standpoint, not all that interesting initially, but Nolan’s direction turns such standard fare into a cinematic M”bius strip, turning in on itself in such a way that can’t help but transfix. Nolan employs a reverse chronology, by telling his story backwards. Though such a device usually comes across more as directorial wanking, here it serves a purpose, putting us in Leonard’s shoes because we don’t know what happened before either. While being continually thrust into the middle of an unknown situation can prove tiring to the viewer, it allows us to experience every moment just as Leonard does. And strangely enough, the suspense element is still there, because you’re wondering not what will happen next, but why things are happening as they are now.
Of course, you can’t just cut to five minutes ago and expect the audience to follow, so Nolan has black-and-white sequences between most of the action, both as a device to allow the reverse narrative to work and as a forum to provide characterization for Leonard and to explain how he manages to live his life. In these sequences, we meet Sammy Jankis, a man who Leonard met in his days as an insurance investigator, and who had the same condition Leonard has. Sammy’s is a tale of heartbreak, because his wife believes he may be faking his illness. Leonard, meanwhile, has a tattoo stating simply, “remember Sammy Jankis,” on his hand, a constant reminder of his own condition, and one he no doubt couldn’t live without.
Frankly, I think I’ve said too much already. Most of the fun of this movie is the not knowing, putting yourself on Leonard’s level, which makes the payoff so much greater at the ending. Therefore I think I’ll just stop here, but with one word of advice: forget everything you just read.

****

Panic
Starring: William H. Macy, Donald Sutherland, Tracy Ulman
Directed by: Henry Bronell Playing at: The Tivoli

by Zech Oakland

Panic is a poorly named movie, as the emotion of panic is never once evoked. Perhaps Depressed, Frustrated, or Apologetic would be better titles for the film.
William H. Macy takes on the role of the typical son who defaulted into the family business because of a controlling father. Also typically, the movie begins with Macy telling his mother that he wants to quit the family business.
The ensuing scene of the mother telling her son not to disappoint his father is humorous, not because it’s one of the archetypal family arguments that we’ve seen before, but because the family business is hired-killing. This scene quickly sets the ironic, self-conscious tone of the film and tells us that director Henry Bromell is not here to make a movie about murders, but a character study on middle-aged men. We see that Macy is the model for the `everyman,’ and that the examined relationships between Macy and his father, wife, son, therapist and mistress are ones that each of us should be able to identify with on some level.
The movie’s biggest downfall is in its inability to tie all of its threads together, not only in terms of examined life relationships, but also overarching themes. As it is, the movie feels as if it has been fractured, then numbed by anesthetics. Commentary on America’s ill-wrought HMO plan, trite views on conceptualizing infinity, the continued cheapening of our sexuality, and the crutch of modern-day psychotherapy are some of the more glaring statements that are simply inserted in the movie and are never taken to any sort of conclusion.
Despite these moralistic insertions, the film is still flows along with minimal distraction, except for the clunky epilogue that only exaggerates the films inability to draw any sort of conclusion from its various themes.
It is a true shame that the story isn’t able to convey any real point, because every other aspect of the film is done wonderfully. Aside from Macy, this ensemble cast of actors and actresses includes Neve Campbell, Donald Sutherland, John Ritter, and Tracey Ullman. Everyone in the film knows his role and pulls it off well. Each individual scene, when examined on it’s own, is a beautiful accomplishment in terms of acting, cinematography and dialogue. But then when each scene is taken within the context of the whole film you can only wonder, what’s the point?
However, since this is a movie centered on a middle-aged man trying to find meaning in his life, maybe there’s a more post-modern artistic statement in the movie’s meandering. Perhaps the thematic scripting is consciously aware that it is the macrocosmic void in which Macy’s character is placed. It serves to reinforce his outlook, that the meaningless life truly is empty and filled with only mildly interesting episodes.
Either way, the movie’s meandering simply frustrates the viewer in that the film never fully resolves, which simply adds more ill humored self-referential meaning to the epilogue’s tacked-on message.

***

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