Chabert Watch! Dirty Deeds (2005)

greetings ladies and gentlemen - I'll be your unnecessarily smug dope of a lead for the evening

Watched:  05/04/2025

Format:  Legitimately obtained video

Viewing:  First

Director:  David Kendall

I can't think of a movie where I've heard the soundtrack doing more heavy lifting than this weirdly soggy flick from the 90's/00's-era of dude-centric teen comedies that maybe peaked with American Pie.  But I wasn't a teen then, and I didn't watch most of these flicks.  

What's oddest about Dirty Deeds (2005) is that it *should* have been as straightforward as one could be.  It has a boilerplate plot of a guy who has to complete a punchlist of tasks in an academy/ academic setting - and he's a wildcard!  What should be a wacky, charming series of shenanigans with a dollop of heart is, instead, a clutch of unfunny incidents, some of which are straight concerning.  

But, yeah, 

• if vicious misogyny and warmed over jokes from other movies done badly is your thing, this is your movie.
• If watching Lacey Chabert flash a slumming Charles Durning makes you giggle with glee, this is your movie.
• If you think a cop named "Dill-do" is a laugh riot, this is your movie.
• If an extended sequence of a dude @#$%ing a loaf of bread tickles your funny bone, my friend...  this is your movie.
• If witnessing the last gasp of on-screen nudity showing you exactly why everyone decided we don't need it anymore is a pop-culture expedition you wish to partake, this is your movie
• related: if the idea that everyone in high school was having three-ways really hits home, this is your film

But to name every misstep in this movie would be exhausting.  Because almost every decision is wrong and bad.  I'd like to do a compliment sandwich, but I'm at a loss for two things that went well.  Okay...  It is nice that the high schoolers seem to live in a world that is not a Disney movie high school.  I'll give it that.  

I guess star Milo Ventimoglia has gone on to some success.  And you can tell he's an okay actor - probably in more of a smoldering young man mode.  Here, in theory, he's our rascally antihero.  His DNA is in Bill Murray in Stripes and Guttenberg in Police Academy.  It's an idea left over from Bugs Bunny-style little-guy punching up at the big guy when all the power structure favors the big guy.  A smart-alecky remark the powerful guy can't respond to fast enough that makes him look the fool.  

And that's what they want this to be.  But it's not.  It's just a kid who's kind of an asshole doing something to impress a pretty girl, our friend, Lacey Chabert.  

Chabert has the thankless role of smart, straight arrow girl who doesn't like Our Hero's high jinks as they've attracted her younger brother, who she thinks will be led astray. (he absolutely will. He's a drone of a human).  She is, of course, also the valedictorian, so you know she's not like every other girl at the school (read: those unworthy skanks!).  

The movie decides what it wants to do at the 11th hour is speechify about how things like all of the kids being obsessed with the Dirty Deeds is wrong, and that nothing that happens in high school matters once you graduate.  But chooses to illustrate that with a hobo former homecoming king.  While also casting a pre-fame Zoe Saldana as a suddenly famous lingerie model and former homecoming queen. So, mixed messages.  

Is it stupid?

It also turns out that it means Our Hero learns absolutely no lessons.  He started the movie with disdain for something as stupid as the Dirty Deeds and Homecoming, and is told "you were right all along!" by cool adults - including the hobo and a full mob boss (famous for their respect for academia).  

Apparently our hero was also tagging his pranks with IAB, not his initials, but no one knows what it means....  and it means "It's All Bullshit" which is maybe the least impressive philosophical statement to crown a film I may have ever seen. It makes me embarrassed to be someone who skipped pep rallies in high school.

Chabert is fine to good.  She seems like she understands and executes on the assignment better than pretty much the rest of the cast.  Curiously, it's the only feature she had released in 2005, and it's between her role as a real-life quadriplegic law student in the Christopher Reeve directed Brooke Ellison Story and as the coked-up party girl in Fatwa.  Don't tell me Chabert doesn't have range. 

She mostly gets to be concerned about what boys are doing and smile when people tell her she's hot.  And then obviously fought the producers trying to get her to take her top off, just showing some bare shoulder in the scene where the only distraction this MENSA candidate can think of is showing her boobs.  Something, in a movie where anything was funny, would probably not have just made me feel sad.

Amazing work, movie.  

But, jesus, does this movie think we're having an amazing time if the medley of cringey SoCal Pop-Punk TPTB decided we all loved for almost a decade there is any indication.

By the way, I don't think Chabert ever shares the screen with the girl in the poster.