''Dirty Love'' is a 2005 American

romantic comedy Romantic comedy (also known as romcom or rom-com) is a subgenre of comedy and slice of life fiction, focusing on lighthearted, humorous plot lines centered on romantic ideas, such as how true love is able to surmount most obstacles. In a typica ...

film written by and starring

Jenny McCarthy Jennifer McCarthy Wahlberg (' Jennifer Ann McCarthy; born November 1, 1972) is an American actress, model, and television personality. She began her career in 1993 as a nude model for ''Playboy'' magazine and was later named their Playmate of ...

and directed by

John Mallory Asher John Mallory Asher (born John Mallory, January 13, 1971) is an American actor, film director and screenwriter. He is perhaps best known for his performance as Gary on the USA Network's series spinoff of the movie '' Weird Science''. Early life ...

. At the time of filming, McCarthy and Asher were married; they divorced the month the film was released. Playing heavily off McCarthy's reputation for

toilet humor Toilet humour, or potty or scatological humour (compare scatology), is a type of off-colour humour dealing with defecation, diarrhea, constipation, urination and flatulence, and to a lesser extent vomiting and other bodily functions. It sees sub ...

, the film received overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics and was a

box-office bomb A box-office bomb, or box-office disaster, is a film that is unprofitable or considered highly unsuccessful during its theatrical run. Although any film for which the production, marketing, and distribution costs combined exceed the revenue after ...

; it also received the

Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture The Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture is an award given out at the annual Golden Raspberry Awards to the worst film of the past year. Over the 39 ceremonies that have taken place, there have been 202 films nominated for Worst Picture and 4 ...

, as well as Worst Screenplay, Worst Director, and Worst Actress for McCarthy.

Plot

Struggling photographer Rebecca Sommers finds her model boyfriend Richard in bed with another woman. Her life falls apart, and she alternates between desire for revenge upon him, sexual promiscuity, and abandonment of all hope of love. Her best friends, Michelle and Carrie, try to set her up on dates. These include one with a freakish magician and another with a man who gives her ecstasy and has a fetish for fish. She attempts to make Richard jealous by taking a director, who is reminiscent of

Woody Allen Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning films. He began his career writing ...

, to a runway show, but he ends up vomiting on her breasts in front of everyone. Ultimately, Rebecca realizes she should focus her energy on being with someone who truly loves her, and that turns out to be John, her nerdy but caring best male friend who has been supportive of her through the entire ordeal.

Cast

as Rebecca Sommers * Eddie Kaye Thomas as John *

Carmen Electra Tara Leigh Patrick (born April 20, 1972), known professionally as Carmen Electra, is an American actress, model, singer, and media personality. She began her career as a singer after moving to Minneapolis, where she met Prince, who produced h ...

as Michelle López *

Victor Webster Victor Webster (born February 7, 1973) is a Canadian actor. He is known for being the second actor to play Nicholas Alamain on the NBC daytime soap ''Days of Our Lives'' from 1999 to 2000, and for his roles as the mutant Brennan Mulwray in '' Mu ...

as Richard *

Kam Heskin Kam Erika Heskin (born May 8, 1973) is an American actress. She began her career playing Caitlin Deschanel on the NBC daytime soap opera '' Sunset Beach'' (1998–1999), before appearing in films ''Planet of the Apes'' (2001) and ''Catch Me If Y ...

as Carrie Winters *

Deryck Whibley Deryck Jason Whibley (born 21 March 1980), nicknamed Bizzy D, is a Canadian musician, singer, songwriter and record producer, best known for his work as the lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist, keyboardist, main songwriter, producer, founder and only ...

as Tony * Guillermo Díaz as Tom Houdini Cast notes: * Deryck Whibley's band, Sum 41, makes a cameo appearance performing their song " No Reason".

Release

Box office

''Dirty Love'' opened theatrically on September 23, 2005, in 44 venues and earned $23,281 in its opening weekend. The film ended its run two weeks later, on October 6, 2005, having grossed a mere $36,099 in the domestic box office.

Critical response

The film received extremely negative reviews from critics. On review aggregation website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, it has a rating of 6% based on 31 reviews, with an average rating of 2.80/10. The site's consensus states: "The laugh-free ''Dirty Love'' is a comedy dead zone -- it's aggressively crude and shoddily constructed."

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

reports a 9 out of 100 rating, based on reviews from 12 critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike". Film critic Roger Ebert of the ''

Chicago Sun-Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago ...

'' gave a rare zero star rating and said it was the third-worst film of 2005. In his written review, he stated, "Here is a film so pitiful, it doesn't rise to the level of badness. It is hopelessly incompetent." Stephen Holden of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' gave the film 0/5 stars, writing: "Even by the standards of its bottom-feeding genre, "Dirty Love" clings to the gutter like a rat in garbage." Not all reviews were negative. Oz of ''eFilmCritic'' gave the film 3/5 and said "''Dirty Love'' is a surprisingly good effort that will fall short only because of poor direction, poor editing, and the stigma of the lead having only previously been involved in crap." Jeremy C. Fox of ''Pajiba'' said that although the film is not for everyone, "''Dirty Love'' is in the worst possible taste. It has crossed the Himalayas of bad taste and come out the other side. And for that reason, if no other, I kinda love it." He concludes, "The response to ''Dirty Love'' says less about the movie than it does the bullying, herd-following nature of most movie critics."

Awards and honors

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dirty Love 2005 films 2000s English-language films 2005 romantic comedy films American independent films American romantic comedy films American sex comedy films Films set in Los Angeles Films shot in Los Angeles 2000s sex comedy films 2005 independent films Golden Raspberry Award winning films 2000s American films