...Never mess with another man's French fries!
Writer / director Emilio Estevez and his real-life brother Charlie Sheen are engaging as a pair of not terribly ambitious garbage men who want a little more out of life but don't do much about it. One day on their route, they discover the dead body of city councilman Jack Berger (Darrell Larson) inside a barrel. Berger, a fairly corrupt man who'd been in league with a toxic waste dumper, Maxwell Potterdam III (John Getz), had developed some scruples and decided to blow the whistle, so arrogant rich jerk Potterdam has his two (not terribly competent) thugs kill Berger. While all of this is going on, James (Estevez) and Carl (Sheen) are in trouble for their escapades while on the job, so their boss has assigned his own brother-in-law to keep an eye on them. The trouble there is, the brother-in-law is an absolutely nutty Vietnam veteran (the hysterical Keith David, who walks away with the movie) who actually keeps getting the guys into more and more trouble. You see, he HATES cops, and REALLY hates rent-a-cops. Overall, "Men at Work" is a pretty successful comedy, and one particularly amusing thing is the way Estevez has created various pairs of characters: Frost and Luzinski (Geoffrey Blake and Cameron Dye), two fellow garbage men forever locked in a war of practical jokes with James and Carl, the two moronic hit men, Biff and Mario (Hawk Wolinski and John Lavachielli), and the two smug, self-important cops Mike and Jeff (John Putch and Tommy Hinkley) who look down on James and Carl and assume them to be no-goods. The only problem is, most of the characters, while funny, aren't nearly as funny as Louis (David), and it may make one impatient to get back to any and all scenes with him. Try not to crack up at some of the things he does - such as his recurring motif whenever he incapacitates victims, or his reaction to the voices he hears at one point. He also has most if not all of the best lines, especially "The Commie bastard gets no food!" and "Ah, lookie here, somebody threw away a perfectly good white boy!". "Men at Work" does work as farce quite well in the way things just keep going from bad to worse, and there is some brief, priceless "Weekend at Bernie's" type humour with Berger's corpse (which is made to wear a Richard Nixon mask). The actors all do a good job, with Leslie Hope as the female lead, an attractive campaign manager and love interest for Carl, and Dean Cameron as the put upon pizza delivery guy. Getz is hilariously unsubtle as the ultra sleazy criminal, who gets an awfully goofy comeuppance at the end. "Men at Work" is good, undemanding, "check your brain at the door" comedy that entertains well for a solid 99 minutes. Seven out of 10.
Writer / director Emilio Estevez and his real-life brother Charlie Sheen are engaging as a pair of not terribly ambitious garbage men who want a little more out of life but don't do much about it. One day on their route, they discover the dead body of city councilman Jack Berger (Darrell Larson) inside a barrel. Berger, a fairly corrupt man who'd been in league with a toxic waste dumper, Maxwell Potterdam III (John Getz), had developed some scruples and decided to blow the whistle, so arrogant rich jerk Potterdam has his two (not terribly competent) thugs kill Berger. While all of this is going on, James (Estevez) and Carl (Sheen) are in trouble for their escapades while on the job, so their boss has assigned his own brother-in-law to keep an eye on them. The trouble there is, the brother-in-law is an absolutely nutty Vietnam veteran (the hysterical Keith David, who walks away with the movie) who actually keeps getting the guys into more and more trouble. You see, he HATES cops, and REALLY hates rent-a-cops. Overall, "Men at Work" is a pretty successful comedy, and one particularly amusing thing is the way Estevez has created various pairs of characters: Frost and Luzinski (Geoffrey Blake and Cameron Dye), two fellow garbage men forever locked in a war of practical jokes with James and Carl, the two moronic hit men, Biff and Mario (Hawk Wolinski and John Lavachielli), and the two smug, self-important cops Mike and Jeff (John Putch and Tommy Hinkley) who look down on James and Carl and assume them to be no-goods. The only problem is, most of the characters, while funny, aren't nearly as funny as Louis (David), and it may make one impatient to get back to any and all scenes with him. Try not to crack up at some of the things he does - such as his recurring motif whenever he incapacitates victims, or his reaction to the voices he hears at one point. He also has most if not all of the best lines, especially "The Commie bastard gets no food!" and "Ah, lookie here, somebody threw away a perfectly good white boy!". "Men at Work" does work as farce quite well in the way things just keep going from bad to worse, and there is some brief, priceless "Weekend at Bernie's" type humour with Berger's corpse (which is made to wear a Richard Nixon mask). The actors all do a good job, with Leslie Hope as the female lead, an attractive campaign manager and love interest for Carl, and Dean Cameron as the put upon pizza delivery guy. Getz is hilariously unsubtle as the ultra sleazy criminal, who gets an awfully goofy comeuppance at the end. "Men at Work" is good, undemanding, "check your brain at the door" comedy that entertains well for a solid 99 minutes. Seven out of 10.