You know the film. It’s a film you have never heard of. The cast might be composed of actors you know and love or complete unknowns. A documentary that sounds interesting about a topic you might like. You stumble across it on streaming and wonder if it will be worth two hours of your time. This series will be devoted to reviewing films like these, the strange items that pop up when you are looking for a flick on the streaming service of your choice. This is “We Found It On Streaming”
FILM: The Dirt
Release Date: March 18, 2019
Run Time: 107 Minutes.
Streaming Service(s): Netflix
Rating: TV-MA
The Dirt starts off promising. It opens outside of the famed Los Angeles rock club, the Whiskey-A-Go-Go on the Sunset Strip. Excited fans are milling about in front before they start drifting up North Clark Street. A voiceover states they are walking up the hill to the apartment where the members of the heavy metal band Mötley Crüe live. In one, seemingly uncut shot, the camera moves up the hill into the apartment of the group. We move through the apartment as we are introduced to each of the band. Tommy Lee (Machine Gun Kelly, a.k.a. Colson Lee) is going down on a groupie in the living room. Nikki Sixx (Douglas Booth) has set his arm on fire in the hallway to get some attention. Vince Neil (Daniel Webber) is having sex with a woman in the bathroom while the woman’s boyfriend pleads with her to come out. Mick Marrs (Iwan Rheon) is lying in his bedroom like a vampire, shooing away any groupies that come his way. The camera comes back to the living room, giving up on the one-shot concept, to see Tommy finish with the girl who…um…well…is very satisfied and shows it in the wettest way possible.
Needless to say, that was a very exciting beginning. It teased with a different kind of biopic–a rowdy, rock and roll Rashomon. Unfortunately, the film teases something it cannot–or doesn’t want to–deliver.
For those of you just old enough to run for president, Mötley Crüe was one of the biggest bands of the 1980s. With big hair, leather pants and a smattering of superficial satanism, the band exemplified the sex, drugs and rock and roll mystique of the era. It was hard to escape them on the radio back in those days, even though our parents wished we could. Their story is one filled with tragedy, conflict, romance and controversy. Just the kind of stuff that makes for a great biopic.
As I mention above, director Jeff Tremaine (Jackass) starts off strong, making you believe that this will be a ribald, no-holds-barred take on the band and all their turmoil. But it soon descends into rote, predictable biopic territory, albeit with far more naked breasts and asses than you’d typically find in the genre.
After that auspicious beginning, the film settles into running down the checklist of the big events in the life of the band. Band comes together? Check. First gig? Check. Signing a record contract? Check. Tommy meeting then marrying Heather Locklear (Rebekah Graf)? Check. Vince Neil causing a fatal car crash that kills the drummer from Hanoi Rocks? Check. Nikki has a fatal overdose that he has to be revived from? Check. All their greatest hits are here, interspersed with the typical rock biopic staples–copious amounts of drugs, multiple sexual partners (often them cheating, leading to their relationships breaking up), and inter-band strife.
There is a lot of drama in the history of Mötley Crüe. But one, if you are fan of the band, you already know all of it and two, the lackluster way its presented, it doesn’t have the impact it should have.
It would help if they defined the band members more. Nikki Sixx gets the most backstory here, where his horrific childhood is demonstrated in several scenes. Tommy Lee gets a small glimpse into his home life, if only to show that his traditional family upbringing differs from Nikki’s. Mick Marrs? He is old and gets a disease, a nasty one, ankylosing spondylitis. But Vince Neil? His main piece of characterization is that he likes to have sex. And considering that some of the biggest tragedies happen to him, it would be a better film if they let us get to know him better.
As the acting goes, it is not bad. Iwan Rheon fares the best, which is becoming his calling card–being the best part of a lackluster show (he was the best part about the abysmal Inhumans TV Show too). You might think that just having a disease or being older than your band mates doesn’t give a lot to work with. But Rheon crafts Marrs as a lovable curmudgeon, saying volumes with just a role of his eyes or a smirk. And considering that for a lot of the film all Marrs does is sit in the background and roll his eyes or smirk, Rheon understood the assignment.
For the rest, a lot of the heavy lifting is done by the wigs and make up the actors wear. And there is a lot of bad wigs to go with the good. Lee does well playing Tommy as a puppy dog-like doofus. Kathryn Morris does well but is ultimately wasted as Nikki Sixx’s mother. She is too good an actress for a part this small, which makes me think Nikki’s childhood sequence got more attention in earlier edits.
My main problem with the film is the overall impression that the filmmakers just gave up halfway through making it. There are splashes of the inventiveness shown in the beginning sprinkled through the film, but you get the general idea that at some point they decided it was just too hard and then fell back on traditional rock biopic tropes.
That makes for a disappointing film. If you are a fan of the band, you mileage may differ. But I found myself wishing the film was more like its opening scene. If it kept that kind of originality and freshness throughout, we’d be talking about The Dirt as one of the best rock biopics ever made. Instead, it’s a rote rehash of the band’s history much like we have seen numerous times before.
Have you found a film on streaming that you’d like us to look at? Leave it in the comments and it might appear in a future installment of this feature.
