Minor Content Warning: The language in this review is occasionally a bit more risque than is usually found here. However, I figure if some kid is willing to plow through this long of a piece to read a naughty word or two, he’s earned it.
Previews
So…why, Pip? Why are you once again opening the manhole and spelunking into the sewage of a gross-out movie? Didn’t you swear these things off after Tomcats?
Well yes, but this is a little different. First, I believe in equal time. Lest anyone think, though understandably, that I’m some sort of misandrist who seeks to tear into men by attacking gross-out comedies, as I did with Freddy Got Fingered and Tomcats, I’d like to go on record putting such a movie starring a woman through the cheese grater of shame.
“A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff nature replaces it with.”
—Tennessee Williams
Second, I’m just plain curious. Jenny McCarthy wrote the screenplay for this implosion. Her soon-to-be-ex directed this movie in which she made a mortifying spectacle of herself. In an interview with Comingsoon.net, Jenny said:
“I sat down and wrote this character in this movie about heartbreak and love and vulnerability and craziness and tried to make it as outrageous as I possibly could. I want to do things that maybe no one has dared to do on screen before because I’m a woman, and why not get some attention and push some buttons… There’s so many male screen writers out there that can’t write a female comedic lead like this because they don’t have those experiences, where I have, and was able to write for girls to get a kick out of it.”
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Future Eva: As you’ll discover ninety minutes from now after Charon ferries our shell-shocked carcasses back from Jabootu’s lair, this absolutely horrifying debacle leaves more questions in its wake than answers after it slips beneath the waves of the Lethe. The biggest being that Jabootu-sized mystery: what were you people thinking? |
So what’s to know about McCarthy? Jenny McCarthy first gained fame by taking off her clothes for a popular soft-core pornographic magazine in 1993 and 1994. This led her to Hollywood, where she landed a spot as host for an MTV show called Singled Out.
She made her first screen appearance in The Stupids. Her subsequent MTV show, a sketch comedy program entitled The Jenny McCarthy Show, met with some success. This convinced NBC to give her the sitcom Jenny, which was quickly cancelled. She has also starred in BASEketball and Scary Movie 3. She’s apparently dating Jim Carrey now.
But my third and most important reason for doing this is that this review is my attempt to return to true Jabootu territory. Ken has been more kind to me than I deserve on this site. He’s given me the freedom to pick the movies I’d like to review and hardly edits what I write. He’s put up with my nattering flurries of emails around review time interspersed with the long silences in between.
In return for his kindness, I’ve ungraciously reviewed only newer movies that he would probably consider dull and not worthy of Great Jabootu’s notice. I’m aware of Ken’s feeling that modern Hollywood has become so focused on the bottom line that they’ve largely reined in the creative freedom of directors.
I’m inclined to agree with him. It’s rare to see directors given the latitude that the Richard Burtons or William Shatners of old would turn into the flights of fancy that yielded Icarus-inspired swandives like Candy or Star Trek V. Bad movies nowadays seem more like an overspiced Tex-Mex dish—just jumbled bunches of pungent five-second visuals, this week’s cool camera effect…and a reheated story. Stretched out music videos, really—stuff to put on the side of cups at Burger King and into video games.
Ken’s feeling, as I understand it, is that this blandness is a response to the fact that movies that get a theatrical release cost a lot more to make than they used to twenty or thirty years ago. And to get studios to fork over the big bucks needed to make these things, the studios get more say in what they’re paying for. This means more people along the way can “stop the madness” at some point, pulling the financial plug before things get unmarketable.
I agree, and would add another related reason. Big movies nowadays require a lot of people to pay to see them in order to make money. They’ve become like presidential campaigns. Listen to the diluted puddles of platitudes that comprise nomination speeches these days. They sound like high school graduation orations, chock full of comfortable, bland, feelgood blather.
Why? Because everything has to be coolly calculated to lasso as many voters as possible without putting anybody off. Translated to movies, this mentality gets us annoying politically correct stuff—like multi-racial street gangs, EEE-vil corporate CEOs, and heart-of-gold prostitutes who trick to support their kids instead of their meth habit—but not heart-stopping, DVD-player-breaking awfulness that bad movie zealots love. No sexed-up 87-year-old Mae West hitting on 32-year-old Timothy Dalton. No George Takei alking behind a softball-catcher-sized woman in a Klingon costume and staring at her butt. (As if!)
Put simply, St. Ken has allowed me to review movies that maybe aren’t all that Jabootu-worthy, particularly in light of the feelings he expressed in his 2006 B-Fest diary. Dungeons and Dragons. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. From Justin to Kelly. Glitter. All very lame, but in an edges-sanded-down modern way. Jabootu-light, as it were.
Ken Responds: First, Pip is entirely too generous in her praise. (And, in asserting that I’m ‘saintly’ for letting her review dreck like Glitter, arguably insane). However, she is correct in much of her musings here. The titles she’s opted to review are ones that frankly hold little interest for me.
However, that’s a feature, not a bug, as it were. First, that she hasn’t tried to stake out a film I personally would want to review obviously saves me a certain amount of grief. Second, Pip has uniformily made as diligent and well-argued a case for the awfulness of her selections as could be reasonably imagined. Third, and most important, her reviews are invariably insightful and hilarious.
Finally, it doesn’t hurt the site, and presumably pleases our readership, to feature films of a markedly varied sort. This is something I have always striven to do myself, with debatable success. The fact is, Pip’s placing her work here pays far more honor to our site than she accrues in return.
So here comes Dirty Love. And Ken, have no fear because, put simply, watching this all the way through is like trying to remove a contact lens with a big flathead screwdriver. Mr. Roger Ebert gave it zero stars. The Golden Raspberries bestowed their blessing on it, awarding it their “Worst Movie of the Year” award, along with Worst Screenplay, Worst Actress and Worst Screen Couple (defined as “Jenny McCarthy & Anyone dumb enough to befriend or date her”).
The Stinkers, a competing bad movie award, nominated it for their worst movie of the year. I took a look at the box office and comments over at IMDB. The studio, apparently panicked after the critics put it through the shredder, only “released” it to 44 screens. (Jenny McCartney movies aren’t so much released as they’re left on the curb like a bag of garbage.) It grossed $23,000 on its first weekend.
Twenty-three thousand dollars.
That’s not a typo. About 500 bucks a screen. All but two theaters showing this film dropped it after the first week. It made $822 its second weekend. That’s not a typo either. Eight hundred and twenty-two dollars. I made more that weekend as a contract vet.
Finally, admit it…you scamps like it when I review movies like this. This one was (partially) watched the first time with my (estranged) sister, Maddy, and (former) friend, Cissy. It went over like a dead rat in the reception punchbowl. Later, I pieced it together for this review.
And now…our Feature Presentation!
(Well, one more little thing. Is anybody else here amused to see these posh corporate slogans—in this case, First Look Home Entertainment, Palisades Pictures, and DEJ Productions—flash by before a repugnant movie rolls? I think it’s funny. Here’s stately “First Look Home Entertainment” and their regal and expensive animated slogan unfolding majestically across the silver screen, only to be followed by a cyclopean stinker. It’s like having Neiman-Marcus colostomy bags.)
BIGFOOT KEN: If I may interject, although I was spared watching the film, I did have to scan through a rental copy — thanks, Pip — for some stills. During this, I noticed that ‘director’ John Asher took a “Film by” credit rather than the more usual “Directed by” credit. In my experience, this tends to be a sign of Insufferable Assitude, and our current subject doesn’t exactly sway me from this opinion. By the way, for a modern film, this thing just looks like crap. I’m sure they didn’t have much of a budget, but it generally looks grainy as hell, even on DVD.
We begin the descent with a home movie montage of Jenny and a hunky boyfriend (actor Vic Webster) playing it up at an amusement park while a guitar strums. Soon, she starts a voiceover over happy scenes of Jenny and beau running on the beach, eating cotton candy, and riding the roller coaster. It’s a monologue about how magical love is—”Love is so great. It’s almost unreal…”—and continues on in this vein about how happy she is to have met The One, a guy named Richard, and how wonderful he is.
But then we pan in on Jenny on the street, fixing to pitch a fit. This entails her screwing up her face for the camera and screeching “Oh my God!” over and over again. Then she flails around, waving her arms before grabbing onto the bars over a storefront and falling over. Then she crawls around on the sidewalk. We get a classy shot of her thong rising high above her lo rider hipsters. (Yow. I’m not a fan of mom jeans, but you could stretch Jenny’s thong up over her shoulders and voilà ! You’d have a peroxided Borat.)
As she’s on all fours, a couple of prostitutes walk by. (I can tell their profession because they are wearing something from the Hollywood Hoochieâ„¢ line of clothes used to mark actresses as hookers without any character development.) A distressed Jenny reaches out towards them and cries, “Why not have sex and get paid for it? Who cares if my vagina falls out from all the diseases? What’s a few running sores?”
After the streetwalkers hurry away, Jenny turns around and spies a punk rocker type strolling down the sidewalk towards her. The extra playing Mr. Punk Rocker is a pretty bad actor (or a victim of a bad script) as he seems remarkably unaware that he is ambling up upon a young woman thrashing around in his path on her hands and knees. He only acts surprised when Jenny turns her backside towards him, pats her booty, and invites him to “stick it right in because I’ve got what it takes!” He hustles on.
Then, staggering to her feet, Jenny hugs a tree before grabbing the lapels of a bum on a park bench and spewing forth another round of invective about the unfairness of love and life and so on.
This apparently triggers a flashback. We see Jenny flounce into the kitchen of a house while calling out to her boyfriend Richard. In the background, music plays, and the unseen Richard fails to answer her. She digs into the fridge and asks whether the moo shu pork is still good. Walking into the bedroom, she finds Richard—the same man from the opening love montage—in flagrante delicto with a (mostly) unseen girl, her feet in his face as he manages to get out “Hi, Rebecca!” between moans of faux ecstasy.
In the bloopers portion of the DVD, you can watch multiple versions of this scene. I guess this is supposed to be funny, and maybe it would be if (a) you had amnesia and couldn’t remember the 1,274,786 times you’ve seen the old walk-in-on-the-cheating-lover scene before and (b) you’ve reduced the significance of making love down to the level of a handshake. Since neither applied to me, I must admit that this just succeeded in being (a) boring and (b) sickening. Your mileage may vary.
Anyway, greeted with the lovingly recorded meaty slaps of passion and groans of pleasure, Rebecca is so shocked she can only continue to blather on about the moo shu: “…’cause we got it Tuesday…and it has pork in it…I’m gonna…yeah…” Then she…just walks away.
Time out here a moment. I admit I can’t imagine I how would feel if I walked in on a boyfriend (or fiancé?) like this. It’s never happened to me, or to anyone in my immediate circle of friends. I can’t imagine it would be anything but bad. I’ve been dumped, of course, and been cheated on. To me, the worst thing is not so much just the actual sex with some ho—that’s bad enough, of course—but that someone you trusted and gave your heart to betrayed that trust with someone else and doesn’t love you anymore—or never did—and you feel like an combination of a used dishrag and the village idiot. The first may be a slap in the face, but the latter is an icy dagger in the heart.
But…I know I wouldn’t respond like this—with a dopey open-mouthed uncomprehending look—nor is it likely that anybody I know would. Maybe reacting like this would result from serious self-image issues, which conceivably is realistic for some tall, helium-boobed blonde who’s sculpted within an inch of her life by plastic surgeons and hours on a NordicTrack in front of a mirror. I can say that if it were me walking in, major league yelling would ensue and then he’d go rocketing pass St. Peter with the imprint of my riding boot stamped on his ass. Meanwhile, her body would set off the metal detector at the airport.
OK, the flashback is mercifully over and we’re back on the street with Jenny—who we now know as Rebecca—as she stumbles down the street. (Nice raccoon eyes from crying through mascara, Rebecca.)
She sees on a storefront a neon sign for palm reading. Stumbling in, she’s chided by the fortune teller for being late and told to sit down. The fortune teller is Kathy Griffin, a comedian I’ve never really followed.*
*Editor Ken: In my estimation, Griffin is less the sort of comedian one follows than flees from.
Griffin is decked out like a Gypsy matron, complete with crystal ball. Faux-Roma Griffin grabs Chav Rebecca’s hands and yarns on about how she can tell Rebecca’s been hurt by a man in her life. But, brightening, she claims to see a white pony in her vision! The horse stands alone…but apparently Vision Rebecca just turns away from it.
“Why do I turn away?!”
“Because you have to learn lessons before you can ride the white pony!”
“Lessons?” [Acting lessons would be a good place to start.]
“Well…it only gets worse, Rebecca!” [Future Eva: You can say that again.]
“Really?!” [You can tell a bimbo. You just can’t tell her much.]
“What do I look like, a comedian?” [AHAHAHA! Get it? She IS a comedian in real life! Take that laughter medicine, Reader’s Digest!]
Back outside on the sidewalk, Jen calls a friend. Here we are introduced to the first of Jen’s terribly acted caricatures/friends, Carrie. She is a Dumb Blonde archetype played by Kam Heskin (one of the ho du jours from Tomcats) with all the big eyed pouty vacancy of Jessica Simpson after a botched lobotomy. Her voice is a horribly hackneyed little girl lisp.
Rebecca asks her to go jogging with her. (What?) Carrie refuses as she has an audition with the show Animal Kingdom in a couple hours. Rebecca then asks her to go shopping. Carrie squeaks, “OK!”
Cut to a ritzy shoe store. Carrie, her lipstick a hue that reminds me of a circus clown, is harping on Rebecca’s wayward beau, Richard, her little-girl dumb blonde lisp in full splendor:
“He’s a jerk, Rebecca. A c—ksucking loser jerk. Every time something like this happens, it makes me seriously consider lesbianism.”
“Carrie, you can’t even stand looking at your own vagina.”
Following an awful, cartoony fit of pouting, Rebecca has an “OMG!” moment, realizing that she left all her camera equipment over at Richard’s house. Rebecca begs Carrie to go get her stuff. She refuses. They decide to call Michelle, another friend. (Can someone explain to me why every movie centered on a woman doing a crossover attempt from singing or comedy has to pair her up with exactly two close friends? Is there some kind of union rule? Always two friends in girlbud movies. Always.)
Spilt screen for the phone call. Carmen Electra plays this Michelle character and if you thought Carrie was a sickening characadroid, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Carmen has dyed her skin the color of weak coffee in an attempt to appear African-American. She’s chomping on some gum like its cud for a Hereford. She’s got her baseball cap askew to hype how “street” she is. Ghetto beats pound in the background and behind her is a poster of a rap guy just in case we don’t immediately get that she’s supposed to be black. She is apparently applying wax to some unfortunate woman getting a bikini wax job, so we see Carmen talking on the phone between a pair of spread legs.
At first Michelle is not interested in going get the camera equipment: “Hah-ell no!” she calls out in a truly cringeworthy “ghetto” accent. But then she comes around: “Ooh gurl, you know I git yer stuff, gurlfriend! Naw…naw..ah won’t beat his ass.” Her faked accent sounds like an elderly drunk uncle making fun of Ebonics at a family reunion while all the people under fifty cringe. (White Americans will know whereof I speak.)
Folks, here’s where the medium of our recaps at Jabootu simply breaks down—I cannot do justice in words as to how appalling this schtick is, and will continue to be, throughout the movie. Where’s Al Sharpton when you really need him?
More to the point: what were they thinking? Actually, here’s what:
“We are thrilled to have assembled such a great cast for this film. We think that audiences will love the combo of Electra and McCarthy, and the script is absolutely hilarious!”
—Dirty Love producers Kimberley Kates and BJ Davis.*
*Editor Ken: To be fair, this statement was presumably made during the lightning round of the gameshow The Liars’ Club.
<<long pull off the Cinnamon Schnapps>>
Back to the shoe store. Rebecca finishes the call and notices that Carrie has her backside up in the air like an alley cat in heat. Rebecca asks what she’s doing. Excitedly, Carrie wiggles her butt at the camera while quietly exclaiming, “Hot bacon at three o’clock!” The camera then pans over a guy who looks like he just stepped out of a Calvin Klein ad.
“That’s not bacon. That’s porterhouse!” Rebecca burbles excitedly but then adds dolefully, “But not even Brad Pitt’s c–k could help me now.” Then, suddenly, Rebecca has a light bulb moment: “Hey! Remember how Richard would always get so jealous when another guy so much as looked at me?”
A flashback ensues: we see Rebecca on her back in a doctor’s office with a (male) OB between her legs. Richard walks in and freaks, grabbing the doctor and throwing him up against the cabinet while yelling, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The flustered doctor meekly holds up a swab and squeaks, “Pap smear?” (What the heck did Richard think went on in a gyno’s office anyway? Nobody’s that stupid, McCarthy.)
Rebecca and Carrie hatch a scheme: Rebecca is going to get back at Richard by making on a guy at a fashion show that both of them are going to be at that very night. Ah, shallow be thy game.
One thing to say here: trying to get back at a guy for cheating by going for a retaliatory hookup to wave in his face is just a recipe for disaster. It’s like trying to “get back” at the Soviets or the Nazis or the fundie Muslims by killing civilians yourself. They don’t care what you do to the civilians because they’re scummy people to begin with.
In darker moments, clouded by spite and hurt, it may seem like a great idea, but by lowering yourself to this, you gain nothing, look bad yourself, and end up feeling terrible. In addition, you lose the moral high ground. But Carrie pushes her into it and that’s going to be the plot of this whole movie, and that’s desperately sad.
So…Rebecca makes her move. As she approaches Model Guy, the slo-mo begins with Rebecca’s stringy hair blowing in the breeze of off-screen fans. She cocks her hip and a gunshot sound effect is triggered. (???) Model Guy looks at her with this annoyingly smarmy poster-boy-at-the-mall whiplash smile that makes me want to smack him.
They exchange a couple of stilted lines and he asks her to lunch. Chinese, in fact. She has a flashback to walking in on Richard. (Hey, thanks for showing that again.) She suggest that he accompany her to the fashion show that Richard is going to be at.
At this point, another woman walks up, apparently Model Guys girlfriend or wife, and gestures at Rebecca. “Who this?” she demands. “Just some bimbo trying to hit on me,” says smirky Model Guy.
Rebecca, in a painfully fake rage, slaps Model Guy. Girlfriend slaps Rebecca. Rapid fire slapping ensues between the three, with enhanced cartoony slapping sounds dubbed in and the film speeded up in an apparent attempt to rocket the already buoyant humor quotient of this scene right into the laughosphere. Then Model Guy accidentally slaps his girlfriend in all the confusion. He assumes a look of horror as she hits the floor. These are the worst attempts at humor that I’ve seen done by anyone, anywhere, anytime.
Now we go outside, where Michelle and a guy are breaking into Richard’s house. Michelle, wearing three inch heels, acts as lookout while John, played by Eddie Kaye Thomas — from Freddy Got Fingered, believe it or not — tries to pick the lock on the front door. (This is probably the only nice house in LA without an alarm system.)
Michelle eventually tires of John’s ineptitude at breaking and entering and busts out a window. Inside is a huge vanity picture of Richard on the wall, looking his buff best in boxers. Michelle and John gawk up at this mural-sized slice of narcissism, with John sputtering, “I don’t know what she saw in the guy!” I mean, outside of being rich, smooth and looking like an extra in the sigh-inducing volleyball scene in Top Gun, who knows?
As per the earlier scene, they’re here to pick up Rebecca’s stuff. Michelle goes off to look in another part of the house. John starts in the living room and is crushed to find Rebecca’s camera equipment all smashed in the corner.
A blue roadster pulls up outside. Out steps…Richard! After flexing his guns in the rearview, he struts inside to find John…peeing on the sofa. Instead of rushing over and shattering John like a Lladró figurine pitched into a mosh pit at a Slayer concert, he makes some inquiries first:
“What the hell are you doing?”
(Is this a trick question?)
John, a little startled, goes for bravado, asking, “What up dog? You gotta problem? You want to dance? You want to go outside?” And so on. Richard just looks at him, apparently rendered motionless by the script. (We can’t be having the highest paid and most talented actor here get his neck wrung like the hands of a UN diplomat pondering sanctions on Iranian sand imports.)
John berates him for breaking the photography gear and Richard orders him to get the hell out. Michelle comes around the corner and tells Richard, using all her ghetto idioms as her piercing blue eyes flash, that what he finds in his bed won’t be mud. Then they…depart as Richard looks on. (Richard apparently isn’t from Texas.)
Cut to Rebecca and Carrie in the waiting room for the Animal Planet audition mentioned earlier. Rebecca is downcast and can’t understand why Richard would cheat on her. (Answer: because, like, he could) Carrie tries to pick her up by explaining that it was all because of “penis insecurity” and a related stream of unhumorous parody pop psychology instead of giving the obvious reason: because, like, he could.
After Carrie is called in to her screen test or whatever, Rebecca looks over the assembled men sitting opposite her, searching for someone she can take to Richard’s modeling gig in order to make him jealous. “Humor” follows as the camera pans over her prospects: a guy picking his nose, another scratching his crotch, two guys making eyes at each other.
The camera eventually settles on fratastic Untucked Striped Shirt Playerâ„¢, who’s staring at her like a hungry tiger at a gazelle haunch. He says “hi.” She says “hi” and he zips over to her as a fly does to a fresh road apple. (A most appropriate analogy, I must say. Go me.)
What follows is actually a pretty good parody of a loser trying some fast seduction moves on someone out of his league, ones he learned reading Maxim or on usenet or some equally pathetic outlet. First he tries to flatter her by saying that she is so going to get this part. She explains that she is not trying for it. Then he tries compliments, like telling her how hot she is and trying to riff on that: that she’s hotter than hot hot, that she’s hotter than hot air popcorn hot, that she’s hotter than the Devil’s pitchfork hot.
Then comes an obviously rehearsed play where he pretends to smell something. What could it be? Sniff sniff. He tries to get Rebecca to guess. Is it lost orangutans or a Florida State cheerleader? No, it smells good. Could it be chocolate or a field of flowers? Sniff sniff. No! It’s…it’s…you! Let me smell and kiss you all over!
Moving in to “close the deal,” he tries immediately to slobber all over her neck and chest. After pushing him away, she has a vision where Untucked Striped Shirt Playerâ„¢ is replaced in her mind’s eye by…her ex, Richard! She freaks out and throws herself at him in a shrieky rage. They tumble onto the floor as the rest of the people in the waiting room look on in disgust and surprise.
Slice to Carrie’s audition. She’s on a small soundstage giving a wince-inducing “dramatic” reading for Animal World or whatever station it is she is trying out for. This, naturally, is all delivered in that horrible little girl lisp she’s affected for the entire movie.
The two judges, manically giggling Jewish stereotypes, Woody Allen look-alikes, love her, being just a little affected by the mini and low cut top. She asks if they are married. No, they cackle back. She goes out and grabs Rebecca and, despite the latter’s misgivings, they all agree to double date that very night at the fashion show.
Party time. First we see the front of a theater with “FHM” on the marquee. FHM of the fabled fabulous bashes! Wow! This is so exciting! Limos are pulling up to the door and bouncers are holding back extras lined up for half a camera pan, at least.
Then we switch over to the women’s room, wherein Rebecca and Carrie are freshening up for the main event. Rebecca’s dress looks like it could go from worn to floor in about 3.4 seconds and she has a do that makes her look like a monster from some ancient black and white movie Ken would watch. Actually, I think she got her hair by licking a Van de Graaf generator.
Rebecca is having second thoughts about going on this stupid date with two shmendricks that are “one gene away from Woody Allen.” I guess this is to parody the fact that Woody Allen constantly pervs on girls half his age in his movies? Meh. They could have done better.
Rebecca warns that if Richard sees this goobersmooch sitting with her while he’s on the runway, that he’s not going to be jealous but rather will only laugh at her. Carrie’s plan to avoid this is to recommend that every time Richard looks down at Rebecca, she is supposed to pull her date’s face into her breasts. (Oh no…)
Meanwhile, outside with the hoi-polloi clamoring to get in, we spy Michelle and John hustling up to the front of the line. Michelle delivers some more inexcusable “street” talk, telling John (Eddie Thomas) to slow down and to quit pulling her along. John is worried about Rebecca, having apparently gotten a text from her, signed Annie Hall, begging him to come and get her.
Getting to the front, Michelle tries to sugar talk the guard. He rebuffs her. She starts to amorously paw on him, which, of course, causes him to forget that he is a (presumably) a well-paid security guard. Because, all male extras in movies, without exception, are stupid that way.
In a hilarious bit, she surreptitiously reaches into his shirt and slaps on one of those sticky hair-removing strips on the top portion of his hairy chest. Then she rips it off while he screams. Good times.
Meanwhile, John turns around to find himself staring into the bosom of an extremely tall, horse-faced woman. In a painfully unfunny bit, Unattractive Amazon Woman hits on him. He turns her down. Then she starts in with a bunch of “Is it because I’m tall? Is it because I’m ugly? Is it because you’re gay?” questions all to which he answers “no”. I guess this is supposed to be humorous in a “so pathetic it’s funny” way. It’s just depressing.
Back in the fashion show, the girls come out to meet the Woodies. Caricatures of all that is kosher nerdiness, they giggle and snort into their drinks while one exclaims “Look at the shiksas!” and the other burps up some booze through his nose. Next, we discover that, of course, the two couples are right down front for the fashion show.
The models start down the runway accompanied by some floor beats and strobe lights. Well, it turns out that the yutz assigned to Rebecca is a little worse for drink from all the flashing lights and drinks, because the third time that she pulls him to her bosom, he pukes stringy yellow vomit all over her breasts.
Richard, up on the runway, sees this and he and his model buds all join the crowd in pointing and laughing at her. Rebecca screams, the camera panning into her mouth as she screams—the-down-the-throat-cam—and panning out as Rebecca is next shown running shrieking hysterically out the front door out into the harsh glare of the glitterati and paparazzi and other fun words to say.
Camera flashes bedazzle her as John and Michelle, apparently still trying to get past the guard, look on. Rebecca comes partially out of her dress top, a fact Michelle helpfully points out for her from behind the velvet rope by exclaiming, “Your big ole’ titty’s hangin’ out!”
This having been brought to her attention, Rebecca completely loses it and—yelling challenges to the goggling throng to “Look at these!”—she rips her top open, grabs her naked, vomit-encrusted boobs and begins to shake them at the crowd while frenetically jumping around. (At this point I almost quit writing notes for this review.)
Next we see Rebecca crying, sitting on the sidewalk and leaning against a concrete post. John walks up and sits besides her. He offers to take her for ice cream but that they had better hurry because the tall woman is chasing him.
Then we pan to a diner, with the two at the counter. Rebecca orders a monster sundae in an attempt to sugar her woes away. Rebecca complains about Richard again. John then goes into a little speech about how Rebecca’s needs to stop settling for jerks and to find someone better.
However, he pulls up just short of spilling that he’s the one who cares about her and that she should be with him. He instead chickens out and uses the arrival of Rebecca’s monster sundae as a cover to excuse his frustrated self to the restroom.
In the restroom, he sighs, grips the sink and pleads to his reflection in the mirror. “Say the words, John! ‘I love you Rebecca!’ Just say the f—ing words!” What follows is a fairly well done display of a vulnerable and distraught John trying to embolden himself and practice a little confession speech of love I suspect he’s practiced before.
What’s this? Actual acting? We’ll have none of that! Everything post-modern must be sly, knowing and ironic. And before this gets out of hand, the movie has a portly middle-aged man stand up in a restroom stall, smirk, and say, “Wow! That was beautiful!”
On another note, it’s time for one of my frank little asides. John needs to (1) take a cold shower or whatever and (2) realize that Rebecca is way out of his league so far as attractiveness goes. It’s as simple as that. Based on looks alone, she could find a guy who cares and who is far “hotter” than John. Actor Eddie Thomas is maybe 5’9″, slumped shouldered, non-muscular, and skinny with non-chiseled features. The character of John is neither rich nor powerful nor famous.
Guys like that don’t get Playboy pets like McCarthy. Women versions of John don’t get romance novel coverboys like Vic Webster (the guy playing Richard). John, in the great Monopoly game of Sexual Market Value, you are Connecticut Avenue and she is Park Place. Go directly to the Friend’s Zone. Do not pass first base unless you pay $200.00 (in Bangkok).
I suspect that before this is over, McCarthy and Asher will try to spoon feed us some of that old Hollywood pabulum: that True Love Conquers Looks and All. I know I sound like the veterinarian I am when I say this but here goes—compare what you see in movies—hot bods and big bucks for all—to what you see in reality: assortive mating based on strength, attractiveness and/or resources. If this wasn’t a strong general rule, we wouldn’t notice the rare exceptions. Those who deny that are either patronizing you or have a profit motive. ‘Nuff said.
John comes back to the counter. Rebecca raises her ice-cream slathered face. “Rebecca, there’s something I need to tell you…” Rebecca asks what. John again wimps out, ditching the love speech and instead blurting, “…I want to tell you that Richard destroyed your camera equipment.” (Rebecca being a photographer and all.)
Rebecca is again distressed and loudly laments her failed relationship with Richard. John tries to rally, saying that he can’t believe she keeps pairing off with abusive jerks when the person that could love Rebecca the way she deserves could be sitting right next to her.
“Really?!?”
Rebecca—a deeply superficial person with a Siberian-temperature IQ—doesn’t get this Texas-sized shyguy hint and turns around and asks the stranger on the other side of her if he is her next love. This guy just happens to be a lithe pimp-daddy Lothario-type who horns right in on her, obviously being another freak who’ll cry maniacally over lil’ heartbroken Becky just to drip salt into her emotional wounds.
Total change in scene. Rebecca is shown sitting on a sofa in Lothario’s living room, making faces and acting weird. He’s dancing around. She asks if he’s sure that was just Ecstasy they took. He says yes…laced with acid. Then he asks if she likes to experiment sexually. She’s hesitant.
He goes into the kitchen and pulls a wrapped item from the fridge. He then returns and tells Rebecca to count to thirty and then follow him into the bedroom, into which he enters alone. Next we get about forty seconds of Jenny McCarthy doing her “I’m so high!” imitation—screwing up her face, sucking her teeth, hopping around, and acting like she’s having sex with the couch. Then she builds up the courage to join Lothario in his passion pit and heads for the door to his boudoir.
So…the camera makes a dramatic first-person approach to the closed bedroom door. Upon its opening, we see her paramour naked astraddle the some pillows, his posterior prominently presented with a fish rammed partially up inside his rectum. Largemouth bass, it appears to be.
He shakes his fish-impaled behind and bellows, “Ready to go fishing? Come on Rebecca…TOUCH MY BASS! TOUCH IT!” The fish flaps and squishes in his anus as he flexes his glutes. Oh my God this is awful! My eyes are watering!
AAAAHHH!
“I awoke in a fever. The bedclothes were all soaked in sweat.
She said, ‘You’ve been having a nightmare—and it’s not over yet!'”—Roger Waters
Looking back on it, this was about where the movie ended the first time I watched it. There was a mutiny, apparently planned while I was out of the room momentarily. I returned to find Maddy with the remote, the DVD missing and a TiVOed episode of Nip/ Tuck on the TV.
All pleas for a return of the DVD were met with a curt “no” and frowny faces from both of them. I faced a united front and, being the littlest and outnumbered 2-1, that was that. In the commentary track and “behind the scenes” feature on the DVD you can watch the “Smells Like Fish” scene a number of times, as apparently it took some doing for the actors to find their muse and “get the right feel” for it. These people live in a completely different world, don’t they?
Moving right along, we see Rebecca sleeping (alone) in (her own) bed. Michelle and Carrie walk in and try to wake her up, but she’s zonked. They believe they smell something foul. Michelle exclaims, after pulling the bottom half of the covers back, “Daaaamn gurl! You sleep wit Charlie de Tuna or do you need to douche?” They depart.
The camera speeds through a faux night with Rebecca lying motionless until the next day. John appears with some fast food (from Burger Queen?) and thoughtfully pulls the covers over her. Another faux night passes with Rebecca in bed and then Carrie and Michelle appear again.
This time Michelle sticks a pistol into Rebecca’s cheek. (Cause, you know, she’s all about the street and everything.) Rebecca, needless to say, awakes a little started. Michelle is satisfied: “I knew that s— would wake you up! You been sleepin’ for three days!”
Rebecca runs into the restroom while the other two hold their noses. As she hops in the shower, the camera shows that her back has fish-shaped rashes—the same shape as the fish that was shoved up the butt of the guy we just saw. The other girls kindly shout “fishy” lines through the restroom door like “How about I cook some fish sticks?!”
Next comes a weird interlude with Carrie doing a screen test for an advertisement plugging a cream that abates the symptoms of herpes. This is played for “comedy” by having Carrie ratcheting up her awful ditzy blonde routine and squeaking her way woodenly through a card reading while a horrified casting director looks on.
The director finally cuts her off and tells her she’s terrible and needs to work harder at it. Carrie pouts and they bicker, with the (female) director implying that Carrie could only have ever gotten work by sleeping with male casting directors and Carrie telling the director off and throwing the tube of cream at her and saying it doesn’t work.
I’m not sure what the message is here. On one hand, McCarthy got her start in the ‘biz by taking off her clothes. On the other hand, maybe McCarthy is slyly and ironically trying to make a point. Of course, on one hand, McCarthy may by dumb enough not to know what ‘irony’ means. But then, on the other hand…you have different fingers.
Cut to Rebecca in a grocery store. She is buying maxi pads. She grabs a box from the eye-level shelves, apparently one of the leading brands. Then she spies the price—$3.45—and begins counting her change. Rats…she doesn’t have enough.
This is actually kind of amusing because, as you know (or maybe you don’t), this leads one—if in extremis—to the dreaded Bottom Shelf brands—like Throw Pillow & Duct Tapeâ„¢ brand. Yup, there it is—Super Heavy Duty “Nature’s Friend” for only $1.99 a package. She pulls off this pack that’s big enough to be a set of linens and begins to walk morosely down the aisle towards the check out.
She goes a ways and suddenly stops, a look of horror on her face. Looking down, we see a squirt of blood on the floor between her legs. A merry comedic tune begins to play as she runs for the restroom. Ah, but the restroom—apparently a one-staller—is occupied. She pounds on the door:
“Please, please hurry! This is an emergency!”
(loud, splashing sound of diarrhea heard through door)
Think that was bad? What follows will have you gargling embalming fluid. Because, you know, Jenny apparently didn’t think that showing mere trickles of vaginal blood leaking and squirting onto the floor was funny enough. So Rebecca begins to bleed a continual slick down the aisle. Turning the corner, she sees…wait for it…Richard! She ducks back around the corner. The intercom above blares, “Irv, we need a clean up on Aisle 2!”
Jenny looks back down Aisle 2—there are puddles of not-very-realistic blood all the way into the distance. She runs back whence she came, passing an elderly woman. The older woman hits a slippery spot and goes down butt over teakettle. Lolling sprawled on the floor, the woman cries out, “Oh help, I’ve fallen!” Then, looking at her blood-soaked sleeve, she cries out again: “And I’m bleeding!” All the while, zany music plays.
Rebecca continues to run around the store, trying to elude Richard, while the omnipresent loudspeaker brays directions to more “clean ups” for Irv to swab. All the while, young male viewers can discover that, contrary to what the ads suggest during daytime TV, in real life it’s not a test tube of blue fluid that gets poured into a maxi pad.
Finally, we spy Rebecca cowering behind a counter in the produce section, peering out to see if the coast is clear. She looks down. There’s blood everywhere. Ripping open the pack of Mammoth Pads, she frantically tries to wipe up the mess, while calling for the unseen Irv to stand down as she “has it covered!” (Doesn’t look like it to me, girl.)
Heightening the not-so-fresh feeling of the whole scene, she sort of slops right down on her bottom in the veritable lake of about two gallons of faux-menstrual blood that’s covering the floor. She slathers it on her as she slides around in it, trying to keep her balance. It’s everywhere: splattered up and down the back of her skirt, dripping off her as she pathetically tries to wipe it up. You’d have to put wings on a legal pad to stop this. Want an autograph? Follow the seagulls.
Generally, when confronted by something this appalling, my mind takes refuge in the clinical. So when faced with cosmic cinematic wretchedness that could suck the rings off Saturn, I start asking questions like: “Who would be so misguided to think this could be funny?” or “what horrible trauma in this person’s past caused her to think that this would be in any way viewable?”
While I’m sitting here typing and trying to have a sane conversation with you, dear reader, about something that isn’t sane—or funny or watchable—like this movie, here’s another point to consider. Blood’s blood. Tissue is tissue. And a period is no “nastier” than any other regular bodily function. (Don’t have ’em much myself, thanks to Seasonique and being a hyperactive pixie.)
But, like gay guys who show up at a pride parade buck naked or women who insist on flouncing around public places showing everybody in great detail the baby they’re nursing, this is neither “natural” nor liberating nor empowering. It’s just disgusting—amplified by sloshing on a couple more gallons of blood for cartoony good measure. Hey Jenny, a bowel movement is natural too, but that doesn’t make me want to smear myself with it for laughs.
This also proves there is very little funny about the menstrual cycle. Guys squirm, girls gape. No one is entertained. Fastest way to make an interloping male lope away: start commiserating about squicky time-of-the-monthage problems with your girlfriend. The ebb and flow of such a conversation will flush most dudes away. What is wrong with Jenny McCarthy? I want to know what has gone haywire in her head to make her think anybody could be entertained by this.
OK, when you’re cartwheeling through Hell, the important thing is to keep moving, so on we go. Rebecca gets to the checkout aisle. There’s a heated exchange between her and the checkout girl. The clerk won’t ring up an open pack. Tempers flare. Clerkgirl calls in a price check for the “woman’s who’s bleeding all over the store.” Service with a snarl.
Rebecca slaps her upside the head a bunch of times with the mattress-sized maxis before making a break for it. The clerk cries out for security to stop her. “Security” turns out to be an Asian guy who chases after her while doing his best squint-eyed, bucked-toothed Long Duck Dong from Sixteen Candles imitation, complete with bellowed Engrish. She ditches him and runs home, coincidentally passing John on the way.
What follows are a couple of bite-sized scenes. First, we see Carrie at the gym. She’s in a pink drawstring skirt and unbuttoned white cami-top and is there to shake it for the men. One guy walks past and she bounces over near him, grasps a railing and wiggles her butt up at him. He walks by obliviously, which is absurd as even Andrea Bocelli couldn’t miss this pathetic performance. But…that’s the way the cookie bounces, I guess.
Anyway, two other girls walk in talking about a hot date one of them has with…Richard! They get on the treadmills while the ‘lucky’ one dishes about how she’s going to f— his brains out while the other chimes in enviously. Carrie overhears this and throws a towel at Richard’s paramour, causing her to stumble and fall.
Cut to a man getting his leg hair waxed off at Michelle’s salon o’ soul. Michelle inquires why a guy would want his leg hair removed—is he gay? Between rips of leg hair, Michelle discovers his name is Tom and he’s actually a magician who is going to appear on the Tonight Show and his trick requires that he have no leg hair. Michelle convinces him to take Rebecca out that night.
Now, a scene of Rebecca talking into the bathroom mirror. Her face is covered with some phlegm-colored glorp that is supposed to do miracles for her complexion. Hilarity develops when she has to painfully pull this stuff off piece by piece, giving Jenny a chance to imitate her current beau, Jim Carrey, doing his rubber face routine. This is about as funny as writing a eulogy for your just-departed mother.
Speaking of which, we then cut to a phone call between Rebecca and her Mom. Mom is in some Midwestern-looking den, complete with the wood paneling and Dad eating a Hungry Man from a TV-tray while bathed in the banal glow of sports. Mom is berating Rebecca about losing Richard, her boyfriend of two years, and about not having kids until she’s fifty.
Rebecca, laying in the tub, can’t get word in edgewise. Mom mentions “that nice boy” John. Rebecca shrugs this suggestion off by saying that “I’m so not his type.” (I think it’s actually the other way around. It’s OK to admit it, Rebecca.)
The haranguing continues until Rebecca puts the phone up to her butt and farts into it. Then, not to be outdone, Mom turns around on the Laz-Z-Boy and puts the phone up to her butt and returns the favor. A couple minutes of this movie and a diagnosis of terminal cancer elicits a sigh of relief.
After her refreshing bath, Rebecca decides to go in jeans. Sadly, she’s a little chucky for the Levi’s and we get to watch her hop around her bedroom trying to button them up. I admit to having done this in the past but…it’s still not funny. Not even in a hitting-a-little-too-close-to-home way. Michelle and Carrie waltz in. Rebecca laments her failed jean calisthenics. Carrie supportively trills, “Gee, they’re baggy on me. But don’t let your big ass get in the way of your mission to make Richard jealous.”
Well, it’s just about time for another fun-filled date scene. John walks into the living room of (Rebecca’s?) apartment wherein Tom the Magician is practicing card tricks while Rebecca gets ready to go out. Tom is another weird one. He seems to be listening to the cards and acting enthralled when he picks them correctly after holding them up to his forehead, Indian-poker style.
John is bemused. He offers Tom a beer. Tom accepts, and then starts making “humorous” noises with his mouth. Har har. Rebecca eventually appears. Tom makes cheesy-looking flowers appear and gives them to her. John in nonplussed. They depart…
…and next are shown dining at a posh establishment. This film itself being a Jabootu–sized platter of celluloid pain, it seems only appropriate that this particular scene will end with someone serving up the same dish.
Tom is a twitchy dorkus who tries to impress Rebecca with a lame magic trick of making a dove appear—and then disappear—under the table. The waiter comes over and attempts to explain the specials of the evening. He announces rabbit is on the menu. Tom loudly cries “RABBIT!” and then wheezes out some giggles. Rebecca looks like she’s rather be in Guantanamo.
Tom orders the rabbit, well done, for himself and then orders, without consultation, salad and water for Rebecca. I couldn’t warm up to this guy if we were tied together and lit on fire. And Lo! Guess who Rebecca spies coming in with the girl previously seen in the gym? It’s…all together now…Richard! The girl that Carrie tripped up with the towel is on crutches and sports a neck brace.
Rebecca, needing a break of any kind, retreats to the restroom. Apparently, her friend is still visiting, but the tampon dispenser is not working. So (*groan*) she has to resort to one of those huge “Nature’s Friends” from the earlier hilarious scene in the grocery store.
She also talks into the mirror, bemoaning her evening and life in general. In a “funny” bit, the mirror talks back and they argue. A crying woman walks in, never before or after seen, and she and Rebecca hug before the emotional woman departs. Not funny, not profound, not even comprehensible—all at the same time. Not bad.
Back out in the dining area, Tom prattles on before levitating Rebecca’s chair (by Magic!) and commenting on her weight. The waiter brings their entrees. Rebecca whispers to him to bring a drink over to Richard’s table. Tom tings the glasses and proposes a toast. He goes into this painful spiel about Rebecca’s beauty. Now, he announces, it’s her turn.
Rebecca, seeing that the drink has been delivered to Richard’s table and that the waiter has pointed out who sent it, toasts that Tom’s love spell “has taken over [her] body and is making [her] do things that [she] has never done before!” Then, she proceeds to try to climb over the table into Tom’s lap. This ends with her spilling the drinks on Tom.
But never fear, the magician knows what to do! He stands up, waves his arms, incants some words and attempts the Paleolithic gag of pulling the tablecloth out from under the dishes. This, of course, heaves the food all over Rebecca while Richard and date laugh heartily.
The next scene is the drive home. Tom, driving, is merrily weaving a tale about a wizard and a little boy and how you need a magic wand to do magic. He then produces a magic wand and raps Rebecca on the head with it. She loses control, starts screaming, and grabs the wand prop, and starts beating him over the head with it. The car begins to merrily weave, tires screeching.
Of course, they do this in front of a cop car and get pulled over. The two cops immediately decide to search the trunk, wherein they find “C4 plastic” explosives and sticks of dynamite. Guns drawn and demanding an explanation, they are told by Tom that his magic act ends with an explosive flourish.*
[*Wow! We’re really surfing the wave of this plot contrivance, aren’t we? He’s a magician, he’s on the Tonight Show—in the last half hour with the zoo animals, gonzo gourmets and rock bands they trot out when no one is watching—and he has an act which requires {a} hairless legs and {b} C-4 plastic explosive.]Unsatisfied with this explanation, the police arrest them. So…it’s down to the police station wherein Tom and Rebecca stand at attention before the desk of the processing sergeant, a tall woman of barking, no-nonsense militarism. She says it’s time for a strip search. Rebecca is to go first.
She tries to talk her way out of it, quite sensibly saying that this isn’t the kind of thing that happens in a room with both sexes present. However, the sergeant threatens her with physical violence. Of course, I’ve never been arrested, and probably neither have you, dear reader. However, I think I can safely say that this it is not standard police procedure to mix the genders in the body cavity search room. This, I think, would lead to a lawsuit.
In any event, browbeat into it, Rebecca undresses down to her underwear. Down the front of her panties is stuffed one of the enormous maxi pads. Sergeant Female Gym Teacher asks, “What is that…a mattress?” I can understand her surprise…it is about the size of the local fishwrap. (See Jenny? I can do better.)
She turns her attention to magic boy Tom, who pulls down his pants and (thankfully just off camera) his undies. Sergeant Hillary Clinton theatrically snaps on some rubber surgical gloves, tells him to bend over, and (thankfully just off camera) roots around his backside.
“Well well well! What have we here?!” she exclaims as she extracts a colored handkerchief from his rectum…which is tied to another one…and another one…and so on. Through the magic of film, we are lead to believe that she is pulling an endless stream of brightly-hued bandanas from his nether orifice. “I was saving this trick for later!” he helpfully explains to Rebecca.
Time to repress another memory. At this point, you’re probably wondering how I got through this movie. I envisioned myself near a mountain stream in central Colorado. The boreal air is rustling softly through the aspen trees. Behind me, my roan nibbles the first fresh green shoots of spring. I’m in my own secret, happy place, in total isolation from this ghastly unspeakable thing called The Movie. The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with an atmosphere of tranquility. The brook is as clear as Waterford crystal; in fact, it’s so transparent in that I can clearly make out the face of Jenny McCarthy as I hold her underwater.
This inexcusable episode ends with the obligatory mug shots being taken. We discover here that Rebecca’s last name is Sommers and Tom’s is Houdinis. Ha ha. Oh, and in an outrageously funny bit, Tom makes himself vanish while they’re taking his mug shot. Ho ho.
After this fun, we behold Rebecca entering the holding cell. Only one other denizen dwells within, an obvious lady of the evening. Rebecca inquires as to what made the prostitute take up her line of work. The hooker answers that she walked in on her boyfriend with another girl. (The hooker is Tiffany Baumann, a former Miss Ohio.)
Rebecca breaks down again, crying that she’s going to become a hooker, too. She begins crawling around on the floor before finding some doggerel philosophy scrawled on the wall, which she reads aloud:
“The hardest love to learn is that which is dark.
The kind that causes the most pain.
It is up to the soul to look past that
Dirty Love and regain the beauty
That illuminated so bright before…Pure Love.”
Wow! Bernie Taupin eat your heart out. I must confess, I had not noticed that I was in the presence of such a flawless flaunter of fluency, a virtual virtuoso of vocabulary, a pioneer of perfect prose! Oh great surgeon of verse! Oh magnificent forger of language!
I transcribed this treacle only because, for those of you keeping score at home, it’s yet another trite attempt to work a movie title into a script that winds up being a big fat mistake. This generally augurs ill; it’s like Jabootu’s toe-nailing clippings.
Rebecca ponders that her “white pony” (remember the gypsy fortune teller?) is probably in the glue factory. To wrap up, Miss Ohio the Prostitute then breaks into song, a soul piece apparently entitled “Dirty Jailhouse Blues.” Happily, we don’t hear all the song. (Although, for what it’s worth, this particular Tiffany is better than Mariah.)
I’m not too certain what this scene is trying to accomplish. Is this supposed to represent the “rock bottom” that Rebecca must hit in order to rise back up? Are Jenny & Co. trying to slip a little message into the sardonic piffle here? It’s hard to have your mocking ironic cake and eat your vulnerable emotionalism too. Most people I know live on one side or the other. Jenny can’t pull it off.
A card announces “Two Weeks Later…
First, we see John come into a pawn shop. The place is run by a stereotypical Middle Easterner who drives a hard bargain with the customer before John. John, for his part, has a number of guitars he’s prepared to hock. One of them turns out to be the very guitar that the pawnbroker played to his wife at their wedding. John gets an inordinately good price for it. What will he do with the cash? Stay tuned…(*yawn*)
Then, a shot of the three girls getting ready for a night out, with the camera doubling as the mirror before which they primp. “Hilarious” banter ensues. Carrie is making squeaking noises with her nose, claiming it mimics the mating call of a certain marsupial she read about or something.
For her part, Michelle seems to be getting whiter with each scene, like they only sent Carmen Electra to makeup the first day of shooting. Meanwhile, Rebecca is trying to be as snarky as ever. Everybody is looking forward to the band they are going to see that night.
And finally we’re off to the club with John at the helm. As he fumes at the stopped traffic, Jenny in the front seat notices that she’s really buzzed. Michelle, in the back with Carrie, says that’s because she spiked Rebecca’s drink or something. They all cheer John for being their designated driver. (Rebecca’s the designated drunk, I guess. Carrie certainly is the designated dunce.)
However, trouble pulls up next to them in the form of a Hummer. A muscle-bound loudmouth leans out of the shotgun seat and mockingly asks John if he’s gay. John says no. Muscleguy says he must be gay if he drives a car like that, motioning toward John’s cube-like Scion xB. His pal in the backseat laughs loudly in support of this claim.
Rebecca leans over John and says something to the effect that, unlike Muscleguy and friends in the Hummer, John still has a big penis because he doesn’t take steroids. Then she sticks her face right into John’s crotch and begins pantomiming giving him a hummer of a different sort.
Muscleguy, able only to see the top of Rebecca’s head bobbing away, falls for this and is shocked. Michelle and Carrie try to get into the act from the backseat with Michelle nuzzling his chest while Carrie fondles his neck. Muscleguy, jealous, can’t take it and demands the Hummer driver to go.
The girls then pull back from John and start laughing. Well, not Michelle, who’s loudly complaining that she’s got one of John’s chest hairs in her mouth. John complains that he can stick up for himself. Rebecca looks down at his privates and says while that may be true, isn’t he cute when he gets excited? Then they argue about whether or not he has an erection.
Hold on a sec, reader…
Dear Goddess Kali Ma, we beseech thee to reincarnate these pancake-bespackled hags into increasingly miserable existences until the sun melts the planet. May your vengeance be spectacular and amusing to those of us who eschew making vanity films. Thanks.
OK, later on that night, we cut to the bar as the girls drunkenly toast with some poem about how men don’t love them and so f— all the men. John, awkwardly standing by, points out another guy who just walked and identifies him as a movie director he can’t stand. Carrie’s radar goes off and she staggers over towards the director.
Rebecca slurs in shock as…one guess who it is…Richard! walks through the door with a pretty girl. Rebecca pounds down a tumbler of liquor in response. Then she wants to hit the dance floor. John, however, is suddenly accosted by the horse-faced tall woman that was chasing him earlier in the movie. She grabs him and pulls him away as Rebecca and Michelle decide to go dance themselves, leaving John to his fate.
Suddenly the movie turns into a music video with a punk group on the stage. It’s some punk band called “Panflash”—no wait, they’re actually called “Sum-41″—and they loudly pound away before the well-scrubbed extras. Good Lord, why was this included? I couldn’t more inescapably date this review by typing “Nickelback sucks” than they just dated their movie.
Suddenly, amongst the band, we see Rebecca hopping around and laughing. She paws over the band members, but since this is all lip-synched, the racket is unaffected. They pipe in her laughter and shouts. Not one of the security guards stops her.
OK, this needs to be said: there are few things more annoying than a drunken woman except a pack of drunken women. I say that both being a woman as well as a woman who’s been drunk her share of times during her seven years at the university. (I’m 105 pounds—two or three drinks and I’m woozy.)
I’ll start with the disclaimer: guys can, obviously, be as bad. They can be worse if violent. But guys can typically drink a lot more—they’re heavier and their stomachs break down a percentage of alcohol that ours do not.
In my experience—and this springs from a policy of only drinking around men with a modicum of class—most guys can get comfortably loaded and be quite amusing and fun. It lowers inhibitions. It makes shy guys not-so-shy. They might sing, do magic tricks, read bad poetry in a hammy voice. The pudgy IT guy with the ’50s flattop haircut, short-sleeve dress shirts and the Loony Tunes tie might even dance with you.
Not so much women. Maybe it’s because our window of “pleasantly inebriated” is narrower, but drunken women seem to have three settings, all equally annoying to me.
The first setting—and they often come in this order—is that shrieky, shrill, uncontrollable-giggling behavior. You know it—this is the picture-taking, showing-off, drinks-spilled, dance floor-collision setting.
The second is inhibition-lowered amorous behavior. This is alright if you’re a guy interested in the girl, but it’s less fun to be around if you’re a guy not interested in the girl—or the girlfriend standing right next to the guy being slobbered on by some soused tramp. (Yes dearheart. Down here. That would be me. Back off or I’ll crush your larynx.)
The third setting is the dreaded, evening-ending, profanity-laden meltdown—a tantrum followed by crying in the restroom and long phone calls. Again, I say this as an occasional (former) sinner—some have hinted that in the distant past I could be a weensy bit outspoken at times. And, just perhaps, some sangria may have factored into the mix.
The second disclaimer is that, of course, there are exceptions. My grandmother in Pennsylvania can be a hoot with a couple of Brandy Alexanders in her, as witty and fun as any man. But my point is that this scene—and much of this movie—illustrates the very thing I’m talking about.
Drunken women aren’t that funny. That’s the bottom line. Guys I’ve talked to agree, with the understandable caveat about the sex thing. And instead of helping Dirty Love be the comedy it was intended to be, all this drunkenness (and drug use) serves to make it the polar opposite. Thus endeth the homily.
Meanwhile, first we cut to John. Tall Woman asks if he believes in destiny. He answers that he used to. Also, at a table for two, Carrie is sitting with the bad director and nattering about how she’s always been interested in Scientology and such. He looks really bored. (This must be an inside joke that po ‘lil me don’t get.)
Back to Rebecca, who stage dives into the frenetic, yet well-behaved throng before the stage. She crowd surfs a bit without getting groped and then is carefully set down on her feet right in front of…Richard! He turns to his date and they kiss deeply.
In a slo-mo shot, Rebecca approaches with (an attempt at an) enraged look. She and Richard stare each other down and then exchange angry words. I’ll spare you the details. Quickly, it comes down to this: Rebecca angrily expresses her hurt at what he did to her. He tells her to f— off.
Socko! A nerdy flash crosses the screen as John leaps in and knocks Richard out with one punch! (Yeah. Right.) John apparently hit him so hard it disrupted the film’s continuity: Richard’s new girlfriend is standing behind John, shocked at the punch. Then we cut to Rebecca, then back to John, and here the girlfriend has mysteriously disappeared.
John smiles excitedly at Rebecca, who smiles back. However, before he can get far, Tall Woman appears, expresses how turned on she is at John heroics, and yanks his head to her bosom. Rebecca walks off.
Appearing outside, Rebecca walks past the bouncers and into the street. She hails down a guy on a moped. He turns around and comes back. She says she wants to get laid and that he doesn’t even have to use any cheesy pick up lines to get her. He’s skeptical. After again trying to explain herself, she just plunks herself down behind the lummox and tells him to gun back to his place.
Back inside, Carrie has cornered the director that John pointed out earlier at a table for two and is haranguing him with her possible desire to join Scientology. The director looks bored to tears. She ends by clumsily attempting to seductively suck the liquor off a maraschino cherry. (This is actually fairly amusing. It’d be even funnier if she choked on it.)
Here another tramp shows up, sits on the director’s lap, and asks who Carrie is in a catty voice. The director answers that she’s just another bimbo who’s trying to get into her movie. Carrie gets huffy and delivers a couple of someday-I’ll-be-a-star-and-you’ll-regret-it lines to the nonplussed director, and stomps away.
Credit Where It’s Dueâ„¢: Even though Carrie is a third-rate caricature of the legions of script-whores in Hollywood, it’s fun to watch someone like her get blown off and humiliated for being a vapid blonde with big boobs and no talent who thinks you sleep your way to the top. (Although, obviously, this does work to some degree for a few. Such fame can be fleeting, however.)
At the bar, Michelle is approached by the lead singer of Sum-41. Wow—he’s a shorty! (Like me.) He hits on her, asking her if she’d like to come to some after-gig party. She gets all street ‘tude on him, sinking to new depths of painful and insulting ghetto black woman imitation.
This is an interesting scene in one sense: if you’ve ever wondered whether it’s worse to watch a bad actress (Carmen Electra) or someone who doesn’t know how to act at all (singer from Sum-41), then you can more easily make the call after this. I think I’d rather watch the singer.
The Sum-41 drummer makes an appearance after an angry Carrie shows up and takes Michelle away. He’s a better actor than both of them. But, hey, what do I know? I mean, Jenny McCarthy had only good things to say about her collaboration with Carmen Electra:
Carmen… I knew she was capable of doing great stuff, that’s why I put her in my movie. I didn’t know she was going to be as amazing as she was. People are going to be honestly blown away about how funny she was and how she just rocked in this role.“
I’d cut my own arm off if Jenny McCarthy told me not to.
Speaking of whom, we see Rebecca on her back on a bed with the oafish moped rider slobbering all over her. OK…how do I describe this? He’s really into it, asking her huskily how she likes it. She has a look on her face like the dentist is approaching the chair holding a snarling bobcat by the scruff. Moped guy decides it’s time to show her his oral technique. Obviously, this isn’t shown, but instead we get a reaction shot of Jenny. Apparently he’s new at this…
“Ow! What the hell!?”
“Uh…what?
“It’s not bubblegum. You don’t chew it!
Wow, this is awful. We’ve all had a bad lover or two, but this movie’s about as sexy as a cabaret run by the DMV. At any rate, that’s it for Rebecca. Unable to take any more of Mongo’s paper-and-comb act, she rolls off the bed and begins to dress while the guy whines that he can do better. She explains that she just can’t go through with this and that this was all just a stupid mistake. (Oh, ditch the prude act. My Terps could use your legs as goal posts.) Parting, she tells the guy to practice with a slice of mango and blows him a kiss.
Walking home, we get a voiceover as Rebecca ponders why oh why girls feel the need to sleep around to get revenge and why we let guys manipulate us and so on. While this goes on, we get a weird shot of Michelle and Carrie slumbering together in the same bed and then one shot of John sleeping alone. Over all this plinks the Piano of Tenderness, soon joined by the Strumming Guitar of Compassion.
Coming into her apartment, Rebecca flips on the light to find a huge stack of new camera equipment and film and such along with a note that says “This is your life.” John steps quietly into the camera shot with an aspect of sublime acumen as Rebecca is moved to almost the verge of actual acting.
John valiantly pours forth some romantic blather about how Rebecca deserves the best life possible and how when she’s happy her face lights up and how that is what John loves. Rebecca, fairly overwhelmed, puts her arms on his shoulders and moves in for a kiss. But…just before they do, she turns away.
“I can’t.”
“Why?” he implores.
“I just can’t,” she whispers.
Good scene; painful dilemma. She’s just flat out not physically attracted to him, yet he’s demonstratively the best man around in the (very stupid and cartoony) universe of the movie. Poor girl. He’s hopelessly smitten and a decent man but just doesn’t have the arm-candy looks, moxie or money to achieve the takeoff velocity to reach Rebecca’s altitude.
Plus, he seems to have a shy streak. He can’t accept—or, more likely, doesn’t know—the realties of attraction. Poor guy. But, while the truth hurts for a moment, a lie hurts for a long time. And it’s well acted enough that they don’t need to explain it with more dialogue.
Thomas (and to some extent McCarthy) pull this off fairly well and it brings to light an interesting phenomena: having a decent actor in the midst of garbage and how, standing alone, scenes with said actor can take flight while otherwise, when pulled down by the rest of the movie, they are grounded again.
Watching the rest of the movie along with this, you are beat down by the overwhelming awfulness of it and care no longer when this part uncoils near the end. Watching a scene here and there over several weeks—and seeing one like this encapsulated in one viewing—you notice a relatively good one when it bumbles along.
John, upset and frustrated, leaves. Rebecca, feeling wretched, chases after him. She first runs next door to his apartment. She notices that one guitar on the wall is missing and realizes that John got the money for the film equipment from selling one of his precious guitars. He, however, is nowhere to be seen. So she leaves and chases after him in her car.
OK, enough of anything good, Jabootu has returned from the restroom and is ready to assert his presence once again. Rebecca, of course, manages to find John walking on the side of the street in the night. Stopping, she begs him to get in the car. There’s a pabulum exchange about why Rebecca can’t love John ending with John walking away saying he’d rather take the bus.
Turning around, John gets one of his white sneakers snuck in a sidewalk planter. Apparently, the soil has the consistency of the La Brea Tar Pits because when he tries to jerk himself free, the shoe stays and he pulls back only his foot and sock. Completely pissed off at this point, he stalks off, leaving the shoe.
Rebecca jumps out and yanks and yanks on the shoe, finally freeing it. She notices that it is a Pony shoe! (For those of you who don’t know, you can tell be the black chevron on the side. And, I suppose, by the logo “PONY” on the back.) OMG! He’s her White Pony! The sign as foretold by the gypsy fortune teller, seemingly a thousand centuries ago. She triumphantly holds the shoe over her head and yells, “You’re my White Pony!”
The bus having pulled away already, Rebecca jumps on the side and, hanging on with one hand, pounds on the window with her other shoe-clad hand. I read somewhere Pony Shoes apparently had a product tie-in agreement with the producers of this garbage. I bet they are pleased with the outcome. Here’s a suggested product tie-in: A popcorn sack/paper-bag-for-your-head-disguise combo promotion.
Flustered, John pulls the “stop” wire and runs off the bus. They rush into each other’s arms and fall into a lingering kiss. Fireworks begin to go off behind them. Jenny’s gives us a voiceover benediction about how once you let go of “dirty love” you can find the greatest love of all. Then, as a forgettable happy R&B tune plays, they walk off hand-in-hand toward the pyrotechnics. And it’s over. Pip pip hooray! Laissez les bon temps (and the credits) roules!
Afterthoughts
Haiku review:
Starts painfully bad
Halfway through, you’ll pray for death
Then it gets much worse
This movie broke me. Every summer during grade school, Maddy and I spent a couple of nights camping out with our parish’s Girl Scout troop in cabins near
There’s a line. Some movies cross it. This one crossed it like a hot blitzkrieg through French butter. Sometimes you come across movies that are not only bad, but exceedingly bad, gratuitously bad, even historically bad. The annals of Hollywood, and most of the movies I’ve hitherto reviewed, are littered with celluloid efforts that are somewhat monochromatically bad – with bad acting or bad writing or bad cinematography.
But what of those rare movies which eclipse mere bad-ness and which revel in all of the “bad sciences”? Badness to this degree cannot be just an honest mistake by McCarthy, yet one is hard-pressed to conclude that such garbage was perpetuated on purpose because, as Chris Magyar once said, film costs money.
This was like a beehive enema! Who goes to see movies like this? Primarily guys, although I suspect the lines are more blurred now, even more in this case with a female lead. There’s really no reason to see this movie. (Particularly if you’ve been really bad in life, because you’ll be seeing it numerous times thereafter.)
I had to watch it a few times to amass notes detailed enough to achieve a true Beggian review and what has been truly amazing is that, like Freddy Got Fingered, this movie has actually gotten much worse through repetition, and is indescribably hideous in almost every respect.
This plot has more holes in it than a “No Hunting in the Park” sign in
In fact, Dirty Love went on to be kind of a personal millstone and family joke. Reviewing a movie requires me to watch it several times. Several times spent watching this movie was a macabre trial of ever-increasing endurance, like training for a marathon in Hell where each practice run is not easier than the last one but actually worse, despite being of equal length. “The Movie” became a personal tribulation. Every night for too long, it seemed, I had to force myself to re-watch a portion of The Movie:
Cissy: “Want to go with us to (something fun)?”
Pip: “No….<sigh>…I have to watch The Movie.”
or
Joe: “Why are you being so mean to me? Have you been watching The Movie again?”
or
Deprogrammer (in back of speeding unmarked van): “Eva, we’re taking you home because your family is worried sick about The Movie and what it is doing to you.
Pip: “No! Must…watch…Movie!”
If you stare at The Movie long enough, The Movie stares back at you. But there’s a last time for everything, and this truly was my last gross-out comedy.
Actually, I don’t believe McCarthy even wrote this. Ever read something written by a foreigner who doesn’t savvy the native parlance? Even if it’s well done (like Conrad’s dizzyingly dense Nostromo), you usually get the feeling the person who wrote it isn’t a native speaker because it somehow seems…alien. Well, listening to these screen caricatures talk, I get the strangest feeling that whoever wrote this script couldn’t really have been a human being.
In addition, I bet the little green thingie who wrote this never even met a human being and the only thing it knows about how we converse in relationships is what it heard during a double bill of Tomcats and Attack of the Clones when they hit the dollar theatre on planet Zoltron. Then it scribbled this screenplay down afterwards at the Interstellar House of Pancakes over a hot cup of bghajg.
Here’s a movie you’ll want to never see again and again. The trio of leading ladies all compete with reckless abandon to see who can embarrass herself the most. I couldn’t have scripted a more humiliating nadir to McCarthy’s career if God Himself had placed the Ballpoint of Fate in my very own little hand.
Then there’s Carmen Electra’s Michelle. This is saying a lot but I’ll stand by it: Michelle is every bit as odious as Marlon Waynan’s Snails in Dungeons and Dragons. At least Snails was supposed to be an idiot and was actually played by a black guy.
Finally, there’s Kam Heskin’s revolting pseudo-human Carrie—the actual Snails character for this movie, a jaw-droppingly poorly-acted sidekick ditz who is both unconvincing and infuriatingly grating. This fair number is forever foul. That little girl lisp she affects is unbelievable—she sounds like Elmer Fudd on helium or Lisa Simpson faking an orgasm.
Vic Webster beefcakes his way through with a character as thin as a slice of baloney. Eddie Thomas avails himself here reasonably well, coming across as a bemused real actor on a bit of a lark and (seemingly) getting a little quick coin in the process—sort of like Helen Mirren in Teaching Miss Tingle—but he’s just as guilty for standing idly by while these atrocities were committed. Maybe we all are.
What about John Asher? I’m firing up the blamethrower for him as well. While we may never know for sure, it seemed like his split with Jenny was fairly amiable. If that’s the case, and presumably since he at one point loved Jenny, how could he take a hand in this and direct a movie wherein McCarthy does this to herself? This jerk’s birth certificate is a written apology from Operation Rescue. When asked about her collaboration with Asher, Jenny said:
“It was great and it was hell because we are both really creative people. Because I am the writer and the star in it I had a lot of creativity, I had a vision. And he had his own vision as a director. So we fought like cats and dogs… I was glad when he fought hard for his opinions because after watching the edit I thought, I’m glad he fought me on that one because he was right.”
She had a vision alright. I’d say she’s seen quite a few. Folks, it’s time that we do some good in the world. As some of you may know, for awhile I’ve wanted to be able to shove Jenny McCarthy into a thicket of greenbriers, but that may never happen. So, sisters and brothers, let’s all vow to spread the word: ignore Jenny McCarthy and don’t watch anything she does. Can I get a Halleluiah? Amen.
The Critics Rave!
“Even by the standards of its bottom-feeding genre, Dirty Love clings to the gutter like a rat in garbage.”
—Stephen Holden, New York Times
“Dirty Love wasn’t written and directed, it was committed. Here is a film so pitiful, it doesn’t rise to the level of badness. It is hopelessly incompetent.”
—Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
“It’s a sad state of affairs when you feel sorry for Eddie Kaye Thomas (Freddy Got Fingered) because he’s working in material that is beneath him.”
—Kevin Crust, Los Angeles Times
“Dirty Love is ninety minutes of soul-crushing idiocy, wrapped in incompetence and smothered in fart jokes.”
—David Cornelius, EFILMCRITIC.COM
******
Thanks, as ever, for the valuable proofreading contributions of Mr. Carl Fink. Carl adds this wry observation:
“Pip comments on the tendency to have exactly two female “girlbuds” in a career-crossover movie … but in her intro she mentioned exactly two female friends, her sister and Cissy. So she must be a character in one of these movies. Perhaps crossing over from veterinarian to reviewer?”
Warning: Jabootu neither suggests nor condones the buying of this film.
