When you talk about the movie Dirty Love, you must talk about star Jenny McCarthy's performance. Is it subtle and nuanced? No. Is it thoughtful and tasteful? No. Is it so wildly over the top that you have to be thoroughly amazed at her lack of ego? Yes.
 That probably sounds like a back handed compliment but it isn't meant as one. McCarthy wrote the movie as well, so she deliberately put herself in positions where she would look thoroughly ridiculous and then took a wildly aggressive attitude toward getting the most laughs out of it.
The story is nothing revolutionary. McCarthy discovers her boyfriend having sex with another woman. She spends much of the movie trying to come to grips with this betrayal. Frequently she aims to cause some hurt in return but it constantly backfires, making her feel even worse. While this is hardly new, McCarthy shows a surprisingly sharp eye for relationships and breakups. The heart of this movie is her character not only trying to understand why her boyfriend hurt her so callously but also why she continually goes for jerks, as opposed to more thoughtful caring men. McCarthy spends quite a bit of time exploring how her character seems to deliberately punish herself by not only targeting obnoxious men but sleeping with them as well. She seems unable to cope with forming a truly loving relationship and thus lashes out at herself with destructive behavior in retaliation for that failing. The mental disconnect operating there is so severe that even when presented with the possibility of finding someone truly loving and caring, she recoils from it. Her self-image seems to be of damaged goods and she won’t make a decent guy put up with that. Since all of this is in the middle of what can be called a gross out comedy, it comes as quite a shock. When I said destructive behavior and horribly embarrassing situations, I wasn’t kidding. She takes acid, has hallucinations, spends a night with a guy who likes to involve fish in his bedroom activities, gets vomited on, gets strip searched, exposes herself at a fashion show, gets her period with no money for supplies, and so on and so on. Her courage to be filmed in all of this along with a no punches pulled attitude toward his performance is amazing. I simply cannot conceive of another Hollywood starlet willing to go so far for a part. The closest thing I can think of to compare it with is Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura Pet Detective. In that movie, Carrey deliberately went wildly over the top and in so doing made a name for himself. I don’t know if the same thing will work for McCarthy or not but I can pretty much guarantee the performance will be indelible in the minds of anyone who sees it. Not everything is perfect of course. The relationship between thoughtful insight and low brow comedy is not always a comfortable one. The tone and pace of the film periodically shifts jarringly. The secondary characters are nowhere near as well drawn as McCarthy’s character. She surrounds herself with the pretty but dumb friend, the jerk ex-boyfriend, the sensitive but overlooked male friend and someone less expected, the hip-hop black girl with serious attitude who is actually white. McCarthy tries to give all but the ex one good scene to try and break free of the stereotype. It helps but is often far too late to flesh them out into realistic characters. They are used more often as plot points than people, moving the story forward and then disappearing until needed again. And while I give McCarthy a lot of credit for her let it all hang out style performance, there are several scenes where it comes off as just annoyingly whiny. This is a very funny, if somewhat uneven movie but definitely not for those with delicate sensibilities. If you have an aversion to swearing and sexual situations, steer clear. If you were intrigued by the fish reference earlier, you should probably seek some form of counseling, but you should also enjoy this movie. - John Shea
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