The movie poster for Dirty Love -- a spoof on the "Got milk?" ad campaign featuring a mascara-smeared Jenny McCarthy -- seemed like a parody designed to promote some kind of C-grade awards show. After all, writer/producer/star McCarthy is better-suited to hosting such a show than trying to act. But Dirty Love isn't much of a movie, either. It's more like an exercise in sustained dehumanization, mixed in with interludes of mid-level embarrassment. You'd say that McCarthy is a good sport for entirely disregarding any sense of personal vanity, except that she wrote the excruciating set pieces that populate Dirty Love, so she has only herself to blame. Even the audience this film is banking on -- viewers interested in ogling the former Playboy Playmate -- won't find satisfaction, as she spends the film caked in "dirty" substances, from her own menstrual blood to both regurgitated and un-regurgitated food. It's clear McCarthy and husband/director John Asher wanted to add a film to the "humiliation comedy" subgenre, which had its glorious beginnings with There's Something About Mary and had already degenerated pretty far by 2002's The Sweetest Thing. But all they did was humiliate themselves, and the couple filed for divorce before Dirty Love even stumbled into theaters. As if this amateurish production needed any more demerits, Carmen Electra (showing her "range") plays a wannabe ghetto chick in a way that perpetuates unfortunate stereotypes rather than lampooning them. Perhaps Asher owed the bratty teen-pop group Sum 41 a favor, because he practically stops the movie in the third act to include what amounts to a video for them. Given how the movie turned out, Sum 41 was the one doing the favor. It would be one thing if Dirty Love were a good train wreck, but it's a bad one.
