DIRTY WEEKEND Review

Release Date: September 4, 2015 (Limited and VOD)
Director: Neil LaBute
MPAA Rating: NR
Run Time: 93 Minutes

What happens when two co-workers get stuck in Albuquerque after a flight to Dallas gets cancelled? Not a whole hell of a lot if director Neil LaBute’s Dirty Weekend is any indication.

The film stars Matthew Broderick and Alice Eve as Les and Natalie, two people who know each other in a professional capacity but know little of each other on a personal level. This layover in New Mexico gives them the chance to divulge some secrets about themselves, causing each to confront some nagging sexual issues.

From the premise, it sounds like the makings of an interesting and possibly strange sex comedy. What could they be hiding? Is it something weird and kinky? Is it something gross? Is it some crazy new thing involving latex that I have never even heard of?

Unfortunately, no, their deep secrets are rather tame, and the way in which each person’s secret is presented is even more of a letdown, resulting in a rather boring affair that contains zero laughs and an exhausting script that will make you scream “enough already!” At one point I looked the film up to see if this is an adaptation of a play, as there was so little happening on screen and the dialogue was so stilted. It wasn’t.

Broderick’s character of Les is a snide asshole, who you don’t care about from the beginning, so when the big reveal happens – where we discover what his big secret is – it’s neither shocking nor the slightest bit interesting.

After things begin to become interesting with Natalie, we immediately leave her to go follow Les on his path of discovery, so her Dirty Weekend is barely expounded upon and felt extraneous in the grand scheme of things. If the film is about these two learning some life lessons and becoming masters of their respective domains, then there needed to be a stronger arch for each character, especially for Natalie, who gets thrown to the wayside three quarters into the movie.

Adding to the dull slog of a plot is the incessant smooth jazz that plays throughout the proceedings, cheapening the film to something one might rent on a whim at Hollywood Video in 1998 when everything else was gone.

I like the idea of this movie. I like the concept of two co-workers discovering some hidden naughty bits about each other and using their night together to get loose and maybe learn something along the way. But Dirty Weekend takes this idea and strips away anything interesting. If you want to see Matthew Broderick really explore sexuality, check out The Road to Wellville instead; it’s about the guy who invented Corn Flakes – who was also kind of a perv – and it’s a hoot.