The Dirt (2019) - Movie Review

Even though he hasn’t directed a narrative film before this point (and no, the extended improv skit that is Bad Grandpa doesn’t count), Jeff Tremaine seems the ideal pick for a rock star biopic like this. At the forefront of one of MTV’s last truly iconic pillars with the Jackass franchise, the man knows his gratuitous excess, a phrase that fits the wildness of Mötley Crüe to a T. Especially considering how well the Jackass films did with marrying soundtrack and visuals, putting heavy rock guitars against each grand display of masochistic machismo. And while that certainly fits here to an extent, the growing pains of Tremaine working in this format show through a little too clearly.

As far as showing off the band’s coke-fuelled debauchery, it certainly paints a picture. Yet another R18+ rating over here, with a prominent display of female ejaculation before we even see the title, there’s no real sugar-coating what these guys got up to both on and off-stage. And much like Jackass, it isn’t presented under any kind of pretence: They banged groupies, making a point to break the fourth wall just to tell the audience that no one should ever leave their girlfriend around them, drank, snorted and injected till it replaced blood plasma, and racked up hotel bills large enough to bankrupt small island nations. They’re jackasses, in their own way, and the film doesn’t hide any of it.

That’s more a credit to the actors than it is to the writing, between Rich Wilkes (whose last notable screenplay was for xXx) and Amanda Adelson (whose only prominent credit at all is directing the music video for Kanye West and Lil Pump’s I Love It). Which is honestly surprising because, having covered most of the main group in past reviews, they turn out a lot better here than they have any right to.

Douglas Booth as Nikki Sixx works well as the central force pulling the band together, Machine Gun Kelly as Tommy Lee is the most legit he’s ever looked as a superstar musician, Misfits (the show, not that other outrageous band) regular Iwan Rheon holds up decently as the older man of the group, and Aussie actor Daniel Webber, last seen in the LGBT stoner flick Teenage Kicks, makes the most out of the increasingly dour moments he’s given.

While the story treats the emotional lows of the band members’ respective histories with the same want for viscera as the partying, the pacing ends up revealing Tremaine’s infancy with this format. Before too long, it starts to shift wildly between the rock n’ roll bombast and the more personal tragedy and, in the process, loses a lot of the initial steam it builds up over the first half of the film. It’s not just that it begins to drag; the two separate halves, which are more than fine on their own, starts to sap each other, robbing a fair amount of the impact they would have had otherwise.

There’s also how it measures up to what else has come out this year in regards to music-oriented biopics. It has been a very strong year for that sub-genre, with features that also make it a point to be as brutally honest about their subjects as possible, and they end up making this feel even slighter by comparison. It’s almost embarrassingly straight-forward as a biopic; it doesn’t have the theatrical storytelling of Rocketman, or the hyperrealism of Judy, or even the cultural insight of Blinded By The Light. While it makes some attempts at spice with the frequent fourth-wall breaks, echoing I, Tonya in places as it actively highlights the artifice on screen, it just feels like any other rock biography.

Even taking personal background knowledge out of the equation (all I knew about the band going into this was a few titbits about Tommy Lee punching out paparazzi), films like this about household names in music should make the whole thing feel important, urgent, or basically engaging enough that a whole film about them is warranted, regardless of past experience with the music. I’m not exactly the biggest Elton John scholar out there, but that didn’t me love Rocketman any less. Maybe this is one that will work better with the band’s fanbase than with general audiences, but knowing my tendencies to watch anything I can, regardless of whatever round niche this square has to squeeze into, I can’t help but think that this just doesn’t measure up. It’s not bad, but it really isn’t anything special.