The Dirt (2019)

With rock-and-roll biographies coming out seemingly every few months in the wake of big critical and commercial successes like Straight Outta Compton and Bohemian Rhapsody, the time would certainly be ripe for one of the more outlandish acts to get their due in the 80’s/90’s act Mötley Crüe, finally making due on a project that had been in development limbo for over a decade.  In this particular case, this is an act just as well known, if not more so, for their behavior both on and off the stage than for their lasting stamp on music and culture, from their time to today.  People are naturally interested in the old standards of the allure of entertainment in terms of lurid details of sex, drugs and rock and roll, so there’s plenty of potent content within The Dirt, which draws inspiration from the autobiographical book of the same name from 2001, written (via interviews) by the members of the rock act themselves, along with Neil Strauss.

Douglas Booth plays the adult version of Nikki Sixx, who came from a troubled home life, suffering an absent father and a single mother who didn’t have much time to dedicate to him in favor of her own pursuits. Music would be his calling card that would, at least for a time, keep him from imploding from his own lack of safer emotional outlet, where he could thrash out his arrested development, angst, and anger, eventually taking things to the next level in trying to pull together a rock group.  After a few false starts, the bass player eventually launches a more subversive hair-metal act after gathering up fun-loving young drummer Tommy Lee, and hiring on professional lead guitarist Mick Mars to add edge and experience. They eventually find their blonde and brash front-man in cover band act Vince Neil (in reality, Neil would be their second front-man after O’Dean Peterson wasn’t working out), and together, as “Mötley Crüe”, they begin to take the local club scene on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles by storm with their mix of hard-driving but catchy metal riffs and an in-your-face stage show that kept fans coming back for more of the party.

The Dirt is directed by Jeff Tremaine, known primarily for his prior big screen directorial efforts, Bad Grandpa and the Jackass, and lots and lots of work for TV’s version of “Jackass”.  It’s a difficult proposition to cover such a varied group of four individuals and their back stories within the course of a two-hour film, so Tremaine and screenwriters Rich Wilkes and Amanda Adelson concentrate more on checking the various boxes of what might make for the best way to compile all of these stories as fun cinema using lots of shortcuts to zip us along in between. To hang all of these stories together, sometimes a character will break the fourth wall, Wolf of Wall Street style, to tell us how things really did (or, in some cases, didn’t) go down, giving the film a playful vibe that lets us know that there may be a bit of myth to the tales that have been embellished to good degree.  It’s a bit choppy in this regard, but still lots of fun to observe in its music-video style energy.

The film-makers do a great job in differentiating the personalities within the group, with their interactions and perspectives all adding to the humor and endearing camaraderie that you could easily find within an ensemble superhero flick, except those guys don’t do battle in elaborate set pieces, they rock out on stage, perhaps just as elaborately. Very appealing performances also help the production, with nice turns from the quartet of main actors, who admirably all learned how to play the various Mötley Crüe songs to more easily sell their musical synching to the actual tunes, though they handle the fun stuff much better than some of the emotional tragedies that come when the highs stop lasting (Vince Neil’s vehicular manslaughter and daughter’s cancer battle compete for screen time with Nikki Sixx’s excessive heroin issues and Tommy Lee’s doomed-form-the-start romantic relationship with Heather Locklear). Note: Tommy Lee’s relationship with Pamela Anderson has been left out altogether, despite it overlapping with some of the events within the film.

The supporting cast is, perhaps by necessity, more sketchy and one-dimensional, and the one bad choice for the film is in casting the perpetually smirky Pete Davidson as the representative from Elektra Records who signs them to the label.  Much more fun can be had in observing David Costabile as Doc McGhee as the force-of-nature that would be Motley Crue’s manager, especially as even he has trouble controlling the rains of the out-of-control beer truck careening close to the precipice of self-destruction.

Perhaps because of all of the ground that The Dirt has to cover, the one thing that some fans may find disappointing is the lack of focus at all regarding the band when it comes to how and why they made their music, which seems to just always be there despite their every effort to disregard it for their own pursuit of pleasure.  Not that their music was particularly meant to be analyzed or dissected, but it would have been nice to get a sense of their philosophy when it comes to their band and what they are trying to achieve beyond a means for money, girls and drugs.

The Dirt is a bit like the band itself, thinly conceived, glossy and messy, only out there for fun. Taken on that level, however, the movie is a success in terms of entertainment, even if much of it is a lot of empty calories that doesn’t carry enough weight to make for a lasting impression beyond the viewing experience.  Fans of the band who don’t get too caught up with timeline inaccuracies or artistic liberties will likely enjoy this most, but even those who only have a passing familiarity should have an entertaining time following the quartet’s tacky, tastelessly raunchy, metal-branded misadventures.

• The credits sequence offers a good deal more footage, including footage of the actual Motley Crue band performing some of the things re-enacted within the body of the movie.

Qwipster’s rating: B

MPAA Rated: Not rated, but would definitely be R for strong sexual content, nudity, disturbing imagery, drug use, violence, and pervasive language
Running time: 107 min.

Cast: Douglas Booth, Machine Gun Kelly, Daniel Webber, Iwan Rheon, Pete Davidson, David Costabile, Kathryn Morris, Rebekah Graf, Leven Rambin
Director: Jeff Tremaine
Screenplay: Rich Wilkes, Amanda Adelson (based on a book by Tommy Lee, Mick Mars, Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx, and Neil Strauss)