Rando! Men at Work (1990)
The screenplay for what would become 1990’s Men at Work is mentioned in the 1985 article that coined the phrase “Brat Pack.” John Hughes was reportedly so impressed with Estevez’s script for Men at Work that at one point he considered directing or producing it.
That means that a full half decade before Men at Work became a regrettable reality it already existed as both a muddled, underwhelming idea and a spec script from an ambitious young actor in a furious hurry to make the big leap into writing and directing.
Along with his brother and sometime costar Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez was born a Prince of Hollywood, the handsome son of Martin Sheen, a prominent leftist activist and the star of masterpieces like Badlands and Apocalypse Now.
To borrow the old cliche, what Emilio Estevez really wanted to do all along was direct. And because he had starred in several successful motion pictures, such as The Breakfast Club and St. Elmo’s Fire, Estevez understandably got the Orson Welles deal: at twenty-three, he was afforded an opportunity to write, direct and star in his own motion picture.
Was the movie that resulted, the 1986 crime drama Wisdom, as good as Citizen Kane? Probably not, although I have not seen it myself so I cannot conclusively say whether Estevez’s half-remembered directorial debut is, in fact, as auspicious a debut as a film widely considered the greatest of all time.
Estevez wanted so badly to direct that at a certain point acting clearly became nothing more than the price the Maximum Overdrive star had to pay to have an opportunity to do what he really loves, which is writing and directing.
Estevez was barely old enough to drink when he scored his first screenwriting credit, for adapting S.E Hinton’s That Was Then…This is Now for the big screen in 1985.
With the exception of 2005’s unfortunate The L.A Riot Spectacular, and voice roles in 2003’s The 3 Wise Man and 2006’s Arthur and the Invisibles, Estevez hasn’t acted in a movie he didn’t also write and/or direct since 2000’s Sand.
Before Estevez evolved into a profoundly boring filmmaker of substance with socially conscious movies like 1996’s The War at Home, 2002’s Bobby, 2010’s The Way and 2018’s The Public he tried his hand at crude comedy with 1990’s Men at Work.
Men at Work takes a BOLD stance against pollution but otherwise has nothing to say and a charmless manner of saying it. There is, however, a weird meta joke in the casting of Estevez and Charlie Sheen, Hollywood royalty born famous and connected, as working-class schmucks who bumble their way through a misadventure involving city politics and a corpse roped into all manner of Weekend at Bernie’s-style posthumous slapstick.
A sleepwalking Charlie Sheen is cast against type as Carl Taylor, a mullet-sporting prankster with a weakness for shooting people in the ass with a pellet gun who gets up at five o’clock every morning to haul trash alongside buddy James St. James (Emilio Estevez).
The two dumbasses dream of someday owning their own surf shop but they’re such abysmal trash collectors that their frustrated boss assigns his brother-in-law Louis Fedders to keep an eye on them and act as an observer.
Estevez did exactly one thing right with Men at Work and that was cast the all-time great character actor Keith David, a badass icon with the deepest, most authoritative voice this side of Barry White, in the central role of a Vietnam veteran with what the movie clearly sees as a hilarious case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Louis Fedders occupies an unfortunate stock character in 1980s and 1990s comedies: the traumatized veteran whose psychological torment is played for bad taste guffaws.
At its most offensive, Men at Work has Louis look at an extremely caucasian pizza delivery man who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and sees a cartoonish Vietnamese villager, a gag of course accompanied by stereotypically “Asian” music but not, in an uncharacteristic bit of restraint, the sound of a gong.
David isn’t given much to do in Men at Work but he makes a three course meal out of the scraps he’s left with. David steals the movie with his live-wire energy and dark humor but in this instance at least that’s a misdemeanor at best.
Estevez would eventually take after his dad and make movies that tried to say something profound about the world we live in and the human condition. But in Men at Work he desperately chases lowbrow laughs that never come with bits like a running gag involving our loathsome “heroes” handcuffing a pair of nearly naked police officers together on a playground in a manner that makes it look like they were in the midst of doing butt-stuff.
Estevez is so enamored of this gay panic gag that he closes the film on the image of a dog peeing on cops he thinks are having vigorous anal sex.
The writer-director-star is perversely obsessed with men’s butts here. While peeping on a neighbor he has a crush on one night Carl shoots what turns out to be a prominent local politician in the butt with a pellet gun, which leads to all manner of complications.
Several acts later Carl once again uses his pellet gun to shoot a dude in the butt but this time it thwarts an evil scheme and saves the day.
If ever a movie had an excuse to be 80 to 85 minute it’s this puerile nonsense. Unfortunately Estevez had no idea what to cut and what to leave in so he seemingly kept in everything, resulting in a 98 minute movie that drags relentlessly.
Then again if Estevez were to make the necessary cuts we would have far less time for a subplot involving corporate polluters and an idealistic city councilman no one could possibly care about. And we’d be cruelly denied a romance between Carl and the woman he’s been peeping on that redefines the phrase “arbitrary.”
Men at Work is a garbage movie in more ways than one. I’d say that it’s almost worth watching for David’s performance alone but you can see David do equally fine, if not better work, in movies that are not otherwise completely worthless.
The anti-heroes of Men at Work are losers alright but there’s nothing lovable or even remotely appealing about them. Time has not been kind to this flimsy little nothing of a movie but its lazy suckitude was all too apparent at the time of its release as well.
Pre-order The Joy of Trash, the Happy Place’s upcoming book about the very best of the very worst and get instant access to all of the original pieces I’m writing for them AS I write them (there are NINE so far, including Shasta McNasty and the first and second seasons of Baywatch Nights) AND, as a bonus, monthly write-ups of the first season Baywatch Nights you can’t get anywhere else (other than my Patreon feed) at https://the-joy-of-trash.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Missed out on the Kickstarter campaign for The Weird A-Coloring to Al/The Weird A-Coloring to Al-Colored In Edition? You’re in luck, because you can still pre-order the books, and get all manner of nifty exclusives, by pledging over at https://the-weird-a-coloring-to-al-coloring-colored-in-books.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
and of course you can buy The Weird Accordion to Al here: https://www.nathanrabin.com/shop
AND of course you can also pledge to this site and help keep the lights on at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace