Joe Dirt (David Spade) is perhaps your average janitor, if you consider your average janitor to have a mullet wig that was put on him as a boy to cover a hole in his head, and now it’s been fused into the skull when the bones finally grew together, and a life so bad that he can do little about it but look at the bright side of life. If he didn’t, he would probably have given up long ago.

So one day when his employer, Zander Kelly (Dennis Miller) comes across him cleaning the lobby and decides to put him on the show, the whole world gets to hear about the adventures of Joe Dirt and just how he got to where he is today. Perhaps the strangest thing of all is that by the end of the story, what started as poking some fun at the guy who didn’t fit turns into a story of triumph.

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Domino Harvey (Keira Knightley) is a bounty hunter. And it would seem that she’s in some sort of trouble, as she’s in a dimly-lit room, being questioned by Lucy Liu.

We’re told by Domino that most people in her position who found themselves in this predicament may not give anyone up, but in her case, she’s going to give them everything she has – which is good, because otherwise it would be a very short movie. The big problem is that it makes for a very choppy tale.

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This is actually like two movies in one.

The first is fairly typical Adam Sandler fare: It’s what you’re used to seeing if you’ve ever seen, well, any of his movies. It’s also what you’re likely to think of if you actually saw the trailer for the movie.

Dad’s too busy for the family, he heads out for a universal remote, gets a truly universal remote, and can control anything. Hilarity ensues. He uses it to walk the dog faster, watch the girl in the short shorts run slower, make the jerk next door look stupid, that sort of thing. There is absolutely nothing surprising about any of this.

What is surprising is that somewhere in all of that, they completely forgot to mention that it’s (maybe) half the movie.

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I wrote an entry comparing this movie to Animal House nearly ten months ago, but I never really reviewed the movie itself, so I figured that it was time to rectify that situation.

Overall, the movie is certainly enjoyable. It’s nothing like Animal House, true, but very few movies are. Frankly, I don’t think it’s even as good as Old School, but it’s definitely a closer comparison. The problem is that it simply doesn’t flow. Both Animal House and Old School stayed true to their vision throughout, while Wedding Crashers starts and stops, which detracts from the overall enjoyment.

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While I suspect that this movie is a bit of a fabrication because it says it was “inspired by a true story”, which has to be a step below “based on a true story”, there was some truth in there somewhere. We do know that Frank William Abagnale Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio) was a con man who, before his 19th birthday, wrote millions of dollars of fraudulent checks and passed himself off as a pilot, doctor and lawyer.

FBI agent Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks), meanwhile, is his foil, who tracks him across the country and finally around the world to bring him down. Time after time they cross paths as Abagnale goes through identities and his checks get better and better. We’re watching a movie, but it’s probably somewhat accurate in that the first batch of checks he passes are little more than paper with some decals on them.

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Jack Black is always fun to watch. This time around he plays Nick Vanderpark, who just can’t seem to keep his focus at work.

Meanwhile, best buddy Tim Dingman (played by Ben Stiller) has great focus, as evidenced by the new office chair. It also happens that he lives right across the street. Tim also has a certain amount of contempt for Nick, so when Nick finally gains his focus with an idea for a new product, he dismisses it without a second thought.

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