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Starring Norm MacDonald, Artie Lange, Chris Farley, Chevy Chase, John Goodman. Released to DVD on November 17, 1998. ![[Box]](/photos/dirtyworkbox.jpg) In my opinion, outside of Tim Meadows, Norm MacDonald has been the only positive feature of Saturday Night Live (SNL) during the '90's. The cheerleader skits suck, the Mary Catherine Gallagher skits suck, and Goat Boy just hasn't cut it. Therefore, the braintrust of NBC decided to take MacDonald off his Weekend Update segment, on which he always managed to deliver laughs, and kick him off the show for good measure. However, despite the fact that SNL sorely misses MacDonald and the quality of the current seasons shows is poor at best, this move seems to have been good for MacDonald, who has begun to flourish in motion pictures. SNL has never been accused of being a dramatic actor training ground like Julliard or The Steppenwolf Theatre, but has, in its own right, produced several major talents in today's comedy scene. Chris Rock, Dennis Miller, and Kevin Nealon have all found numerous gigs pitching phone company promotions, and David Spade is a regular on NBC's Just Shoot Me, one of the smarter sit-com's to have come along in the last five years. It is Adam Sandler, though, who has risen to become the biggest star of the ex-SNLers, with starring roles in light, entertaining films like Happy Gilmore and, currently, The Waterboy propelling his career into the stratosphere. Following this path, playing a likable loser in a light, yet entertaining film, MacDonald wrote and starred in Dirty Work. MacDonald and Artie Lange are two best friends who, sick of putting up with other people's crap (that, and needing a quick $50,000 to pay for Lange's father's heart transpla.html>spla.html>spla.html>spla.html>splant) conceive of a business idea: revenge for hire. If you've been taken advantage of, or made to look the fool, you can pay MacDonald and Lange to nefariously even the score. This revenge can take the form of having the two place dead fish around your rivals' living quarters, or having them hire homeless guys to run around screaming in your rivals' office building. Ultimately, MacDonald and Lange fall into an evil trap set by the king of low budget comedy evil, Christopher MacDonald (no relation to Norm), that forces MacDonald and Lange to reevaluate their trade and, naturally, concoct some really funny, really preposterous, hair brain scheme to get even that also allows Norm to get the girl. I enjoyed Dirty Work a lot more than I expected because a) Norm MacDonald is God, and b) director Bob Saget doesn't try to turn this light and amusing tale into something more than that. MacDonald has his own distinct charm, from his preoccupations with notes to himself and anal rape, to his particularly unique cadence of speech and pronunciation that I find especially humorous. By mixing MacDonald's comedic style with a script (also written by Fred Wolf and Frank Sebastien) that consciously chooses not to inundate the viewer with societally positive messages, Saget has created a nearly perfect environment for MacDonald to make his leading debut. Dirty Work would be an entertaining movie to see at any given time, but would seem to be a near perfect film to watch while in the company of drunken friends and co-workers. MacDonald should get down on his knees and thank NBC for firing him, freeing up his schedule to make movies. Five years from now, MacDonald could very well be the next Adam Sandler.
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![[Photo]](/photos/dirtywork1.jpg)