'Dirty Love' Movie Review

Some films you watch because they're good. Some you watch because they're bad. And then there's that rarer third zone, where a film is so committed to its own chaos that watching it becomes a sort of group sport. Dirty Love sits firmly in that third zone. The question isn't whether it's good. The question is whether you survive it.

Why You Should Watch It (Yes, Really)

The honest answer first: because it's funny in ways the people who made it definitely did not intend. Released in 2005 and written by Jenny McCarthy herself, Dirty Love follows Rebecca, a struggling photographer who catches her supermodel boyfriend cheating and spirals into a string of dating disasters. That's the plot, technically. What you actually get is a series of bizarre set pieces (including the now-infamous supermarket scene that has to be seen to be believed) all dressed up in glossy mid-2000s rom-com packaging.

If you've ever sat through a movie thinking "did they really just do that," this one delivers that feeling on a five-minute timer. It isn't the cozy Mystery Science Theater so-bad-it's-good. It's a different animal. The kind of film you put on with friends when you want to argue about whether anyone involved was being intentional.

Lower your expectations to the floor and the floor opens up into a basement.

The Cast Is Stacked With People You Recognize

Here's where it gets genuinely interesting. The supporting cast is loaded with people who went on to do real work elsewhere. Eddie Kaye Thomas, the American Pie alum, plays John, the platonic best friend who's loved Rebecca all along. He's the only person in this film who seems to be acting in a normal movie. Quietly, he's the reason any of it functions.

Carmen Electra shows up as Rebecca's friend Michelle and brings exactly the bubblegum-chaos energy you'd expect. Kathy Griffin plays Madame Belly, a wildly over-the-top psychic who tells Rebecca to look for her "white pony." Guillermo Diaz, who'd later become a household face thanks to Scandal, is in here too as Tom Houdini. Even Lochlyn Munro and Jessica Collins drop in. Then, in a fact that lands like a non-sequitur from the era, Sum 41's Deryck Whibley shows up playing a character named Tony. Yes, that Sum 41.

Less a coherent ensemble and more a who-dropped-in-from-where game. That's part of the appeal.

The Razzie Sweep

Dirty Love didn't just lose at the Razzies. It cleaned house. At the 26th Golden Raspberry Awards, the film walked away with four wins out of six nominations: Worst Picture, Worst Director (John Mallory Asher), Worst Actress (Jenny McCarthy), and Worst Screenplay (also Jenny McCarthy). Carmen Electra was nominated for Worst Supporting Actress but lost that one to Paris Hilton in House of Wax, which feels like its own kind of cinematic moment from the era.

For context, Roger Ebert ranked Dirty Love the third worst film of 2005 and gave it a rare zero-star rating. The film sits at 6% on Rotten Tomatoes from 31 critics, with the consensus calling it a "comedy dead zone." Metacritic landed it at 9 out of 100. Dirty Love did not recover from these numbers. It got more famous for not recovering.

The Behind-The-Scenes Curse

Now for the part that makes this film genuinely strange in retrospect. Jenny McCarthy was married to director John Mallory Asher when they made it. She wrote it. She produced it. She starred in it. He directed it. They divorced in September 2005, the same month the film was released into 44 theaters. Total domestic box office: $36,099. Reported budget: $9 million. That math is its own horror story.

So you're watching a romantic comedy about love finding a way, made by a couple who were actively coming apart while the film was rolling out. There's a layer of accidental tragedy underneath every scene that nobody planned. Asher reportedly hasn't directed anything bigger since. McCarthy, to date, hasn't written another feature film. For both of them, this one functioned as a career terminator.

Three months after the release, McCarthy started dating Jim Carrey. The timing of all of this is the kind of stuff that, in a movie about this movie, would feel too on the nose to write.

Standout Performances And Weak Links

Eddie Kaye Thomas is the standout. Not because he's doing anything flashy. He's just doing recognizable acting, which in this context feels almost subversive. He plays the supportive best friend with actual warmth and his scenes with McCarthy work in a way the rest of the film doesn't. Even reviewers who shredded the rest of the film made room to say nice things about him.

The weakest link is the tonal collision. Dirty Love wants to be a raunchy gross-out comedy in the post-American Pie vein, but it also wants to be a sweet romantic comedy with a real emotional payoff. It commits to neither. The gross-out beats land too crude for the rom-com to recover, and the rom-com beats are too soft for the gross-out energy to feel earned. You can almost feel the script being torn between two films and getting neither.

What To Look Out For

Watch for the supermarket scene. You'll know it when it happens. It's the bit critics keep singling out 20 years later. Watch for the Woody Allen-style character who shows up at a runway show and the scene goes exactly where you expect and also somehow worse. Keep an ear out for the moment Eddie Kaye Thomas delivers a line that sounds like it's from a better movie entirely. And watch Carmen Electra in every scene she's in. She's the cast member who looks aware of what kind of film she's actually starring in, and she leans into it with a wink the lead performance never quite finds.

This isn't a film for everyone. It's a film for people who like their cinema with a little chaos, a little contemporary kitsch, and a lot of "wait, that just happened?" Watch it knowing exactly what it is, and at 91 minutes, it might just be the most entertaining trash-fire of your week.