Joe

Another of those cut-and-paste comedies from Adam Sandler's production company starring one of Sandler's erstwhile Saturday Night Live colleagues, The Adventures of Joe Dirt finds the magnificently caustic David Spade emasculated by a sentimental script and shapeless, haphazard cutting. Spade plays the title character, a white-trash orphan in search of the parents who abandoned him at the Grand Canyon. The humor is supposed to come from Joe's misadventures, his redneck gullibility, and his encounters with such figures as a serial killer, a wacked-out janitor (Christopher Walken), and a lovable gal (Jamie Pressly) who may, unfortunately, turn out to be his sister. But the squishier requirements of the story, requiring the audience to feel deeply for the pain of Spade's caricature, are an irritant and force Spade to veer from the nastier stuff he does so well. With Kid Rock, Dennis Miller. --Tom Keogh