It’s not often you see a movie open where a rock star performs cunnilingus with gusto in the middle of a party, while the singer of the band doggy style fucks another and then said groupie squirts across the room in stuttering slow motion to an eruption of rowdy cheers. But hey, this is the story of Mötley Crüe, and these dirtbag lowlifes are obviously a classy bunch. Because, if you take classic tales of debauched hedonism— Led Zeppelin’s Hammer of the Gods, Aerosmith’s Walk This Way, and even Marilyn Manson’s The Long Hard Road Out of Hell— Mötley Crüe’s The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band, takes the cake.
So, while they had a few hits, defined the glammy hair metal era of the 1980s and sold millions of records, the band is mostly known and remembered for their bacchanalia degenerate exploits off stage. Which is what Netflix’s mostly irredeemable and unpleasant “The Dirt” is mostly interested in. That’s “the good stuff” after all—though the film suddenly decides to try and tie a rosy bow on the story on the conclusion and try and pretend it was all about the bonds of brotherhood that carried them through (although no one seems to give a shit about each other).
Featuring hackneyed voiceover, awful wigs, appalling dialogue, an excruciating script, and feelingly painfully dated, “The Dirt” is even worse than “Bohemian Rhapsody,” if you can imagine. Directed by Jeff Tremaine, co-creator of MTV’s “Jackass” series and the filmmaker behind all of the “Jackass” films, including the 2013 spin-off “Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa,” and a connoisseur of rude, depraved tales, dumb, macho barbarian Neanderthals, “The Dirt” is what you’d expect: a drunken orgy of wild mayhem, grand overkill, and sordid abuses. At first, some of it is mildly amusing—in a perverse sort of way when you’re witnessing a trainwreck unfold—but it wears out its ironic pleasures and welcome quickly, and when it does, it happens violently, like the way a fun drug habit has a way of turning on you like a nasty betraying serpent.
“The Dirt” focuses at first, on the creative leader of the band, bassist and songwriter Nikki Sixx (Douglas Booth), who comes from nothing but dysfunction and a broken home. With dreams of making it big in L.A. on the Sunset Strip and the Whiskey A Go Go rock club, Sixx eventually leaves his current band and recruits Tommy Lee on drums (Machine Gun Kelly), a much older Mick Mars on guitar (Iwan Rheon from “Game of Thrones”) and eventually after some prodding, singer Vince Neil (Daniel Webber).
The band’s brand and promise are to kick ass and take names, all the dumb clichés, but more presciently, to break through the noise and deliver something bold and shocking that will jolt audiences into paying attention. And from there it unfolds unsurprisingly. The band has a meteoric rise—nabbing an Elektra Records contract (via Pete Davidson as A&R exec with a bad wig), scoring a bullish manager (David Costabile)—they tour with all the greats, meeting legends like Ozzy Osbourne and Van Halen’s David Lee Roth, but with every ascent there’s a great fall and soon their out of bounds behavior boomerangs and things go South.
Nikki Sixx has a famous overdose and comes back from the dead, Vince Neil got into a vicious car wreck that killed innocents and the drummer of Hanoi Rocks, Tommy Lee marries TV star, Heather Locklear, but his dick botches that one up and Mick Mars, suffering from a degenerative bone disease, just drinks away his pain.
There are some mild, minor highlights. Rheon as the grumpy, elder Mick Mars is easily the best part of the movie; and its meta-like technique of occasionally breaking the fourth wall to explain some of the context of the stories to the audience—while tired and trite overall—does possess a tiny bit more comedic value
But much of it is juvenile, casually offensive, and careless of course. The cast is routinely dire too (aside Rheon). Kelly is a dope, Webber is unexceptional, and while there’s a smidge of absurd value to it if you grew up listening to these guys and can appreciate the ludicrousness of some of these situations, there’s zero emotional connection to what’s presented as clownish figures.
In keeping with the director and his kinship for bro-y, douche reality shows (he exec produces fatuous MTV junk like Rob Dyrdek’s “Fantasy Factory,” “Ridiculousness,” “Nitro Circus,” and Adult Swim’s “Loiter Squad,”) “The Dirt,” is like a forgettable TV movie than anything else and acts as quick tour through the superficial greatest hits of their story, never lingering on any sobering moment too long. Anything meant to feel soul-crushing or like a wake-up-call moment of clarity is laughably misguided because Tremaine has no affinity for the meaningful. After a band break up and the death of a child try and inject some last minute emotional heft into the story, it’s all just far too late to make a difference and even a little embarrassing (and yes, there’s probably a reason they’ve been trying to make this film since 2006, but everyone said no to it, except the content-happy Netflix).
“They are savages with cash who care nothing about nobody, [not] even each other,” manager Doc McGhee says at one point in the Dirt book and that sums it up well. “The Dirt” is ultimately supposed to be an unapologetic tribute to living the fast life, but in the end, it’s just painfully dated and pointless with zero depth or insights. Kickstart your heart it won’t, but you go into shock O.D. over just how bad and worthless it is. [D+]