The Dirt reviews: What do critics say about Mötley Crüe biopic on Netflix

The Dirt tells the true story of Mötley Crüe’s rise to fame and subsequent trials and tribulations. The movie is based on their collectively written autobiography from 2001. Netflix brought the film, which had languished in development hell since 2006, to internet streaming sites on Friday, March 22, 2019.

What do critics say about The Dirt?

The Dirt has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 45 percent, indicating negative reviews.

Keith Uhlich for the Hollywood Reporter:

None of it adds up to much beyond painting the band, despite their often repellently bad behaviour, in a flattering light.

Owen Gleiberman for Variety:

It’s just a thinly written 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.

Emily Yoshida for New York Magazine/Vulture:

Its own pointlessness may keep The Dirt from feeling like an actual affront to humanity, but that doesn’t make it very good, either.

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Lorraine Ali for the Los Angeles Times:

It’s as if the film arrived to the streaming service in a bubble, unaware that the culture has moved on and that Netflix is brimming with content written, directed and starring strong women.

Rafer Guzman for Newsday:

A delightfully disreputable biopic about some of rock’s last true bad boys.

Alex McLevy for AV Club:

If only it could be half as fun as Mötley Crüe thinks it is.

Spencer Kornhaber for The Atlantic:

The danger of a document like The Dirt is in showing pigheadedness as not only fun and cool, but also elemental, inexplicable, and unstoppable. Boys will be boys, boys, boys.

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Adam Graham for Detroit News:

A bit of introspection would heighten the experience and deepen the characters, but Tremaine leans on familiar themes of tribal unity to glaze over the thinner sections of the script.

David Ehrlich for indieWire:

Rock biopics often struggle with the part after the party’s over, but The Dirt becomes unusually adrift; at times, you can’t even tell what decade you’re supposed to be watching…

Brian Tallerico for RogerEbert.com:

You could listen to Dr Feelgood two full times during the run time of The Dirt and learn just about as much about the band as you do in this R-rated Wikipedia article of a movie.

Jason Bailey for the New York Times:

“A junior varsity Bohemian Rhapsody” complete with many of the same crude devices: embarrassingly bad wigs, hilariously on-the-nose needle drops (the band plays Take Me to the Top as they go … to the top) and declamatory, subtext-free dialogue.

THE HIGHWAYMEN ON NETFLIX REVIEWS: WHAT DO CRITICS SAY ABOUT THE FILM?

Audra Schroeder for The Daily Dot:

The biopic works a little too hard to suggest that they were really just good boys from broken homes who got sucked into the void of music industry excess.

Molly Freeman for ScreenRant:

Netflix’s The Dirt has all the sensationalist sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll of Mötley Crüe, but little heart despite its attempts to humanize the band.

Chuck Bowen for Slant Magazine:

Like 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.

Amy Zimmerman for The Daily Beast:

A tasteless celebration of rock-star clichés.

The Dirt is available to stream on Netflix now