The Dirt (2019)

It’s cartoonish, fast-paced, a bit cheesy, and ridiculously dumb fun.

Like most biopics, The Dirt crams so many events into its narrative as to compromise the sense that these are real characters in the here and now.

I'm not sure how much of The Dirt is good, old-fashioned hyperbole. Good lord, I hope a lot of it is, although I'm sure the band -- the members of which wrote the book on which the film is based in addition to serving as co-producers -- would swear everything in it is true.

None of it adds up to much beyond painting the band, despite their often repellently bad behavior, in a flattering light.

It’s just a thinly written (by Rich Wilkes and Amanda Adelson), generically staged (by Jeff Tremaine, director of the “Jackass” films) VH1-style sketchbook of a movie — which is to say, it’s a Netflix film, with zero atmosphere, overly blunt lighting, and a threadbare post-psychological telegraphed quality that gives you nothing to read between the lines.