Joe Dirt

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Joe Dirt ★★ 2001 (PG-13)

Spade plays the hapless, well-meaning personification of every trailer-trash joke you've ever heard or told. He sports a robo-mullet, earns his keep with degrading, sub-minimum wage jobs, drives a beat-up muscle car, and grooves to ‘70s arena-rock. He's also searching for his parents, who bailed on him during a trip to the Grand Canyon when he was eight. Too bad he isn't funny. Co-writers Spade and Wolf spend too much time on the heart strings and not enough on the funny bone, which results in an unholy hybrid of Jerry Springer and the Lifetime Network. Miller's shock-jock and Walken's crazed janitor add some genuine laughs to the proceedings, but not enough. 91m/C VHS, DVD, UMD . US David Spade, Dennis Miller, Adam Beach, Christopher Walken, Jaime Pressly, Caroline Aaron, Fred Ward, Brittany Daniel, Kid Rock, Erik Per Sullivan, Megan Taylor Harvey; D: Dennie Gordon; W: David Spade, Fred Wolf; C: John R. Leonetti; M: Waddy Wachtel.