Based on Mötley Crüe's 2001 best-selling autobiography, THE DIRT is an unflinching story about sex, drugs, rock 'n roll, fame, and the high price of excess. Director Jeff Tremaine shows us just how Nikki Sixx (Douglas Booth), Mick Mars (Iwan Rheon), Tommy Lee (Colson Baker), and Vince Neil (Daniel Webber) took Mötley Crüe from the Sunset Strip to the world stage, and what it meant to become the world's most notorious rock band.... (Full plot summary below)
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Based on Mötley Crüe's 2001 best-selling autobiography, THE DIRT is an unflinching story about sex, drugs, rock 'n roll, fame, and the high price of excess. Director Jeff Tremaine shows us just how Nikki Sixx (Douglas Booth), Mick Mars (Iwan Rheon), Tommy Lee (Colson Baker), and Vince Neil (Daniel Webber) took Mötley Crüe from the Sunset Strip to the world stage, and what it meant to become the world's most notorious rock band.
Leave your thoughts about The Dirt.
| IGNKenneth Seward Jr.Netflix’s The Dirt won’t win any awards nor will it inspire any would-be musicians, but it is entertaining and offers up a compelling story about Mötley Crüe. And while it isn’t a completely accurate depiction of the band’s tumultuous career, the film itself is insightful. |
| Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyIt’s cartoonish, fast-paced, a bit cheesy, and ridiculously dumb fun. |
| The A.V. ClubAlex McLevyBut even with the absurdist spectacle making for occasionally fun viewing, what has room to rise and fall in a 400-plus page book gets condensed into trite moralizing in 108 minutes. |
| New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottI'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. |
| Slant MagazineChuck BowenLike 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. |
| The GuardianStephen SmartWhat makes the film most successful are the four performers. The standout is Baker (better known as rapper Machine Gun Kelly) who plays Tommy Lee with both a sweet naivety and an insidious mischievousness that make some of the darker moments sneak up on you without feeling unearned. |
| The Hollywood ReporterKeith UhlichNone of it adds up to much beyond painting the band, despite their often repellently bad behavior, in a flattering light. |
| VarietyOwen GleibermanIt’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. |
| New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaIts own pointlessness may keep The Dirt from feeling like an actual affront to humanity, but that doesn't make it very good, either. |
| Rolling StoneDavid FearThat this retelling has no time for the facts, given the book’s dodgy relationship to the truth, isn’t shocking. That it feels this surprisingly fun-free and generic to a fault, frankly, kind of is. Fans deserve better. If any of them want to collectively sue for defamation of character, let me know where to sign. |
