Men at Work (1990) Triumph/Action-Comedy RT: 98 minutes Rated PG-13 (language and some violence) Director: Emilio Estevez Screenplay: Emilio Estevez Music: Stewart Copeland Cinematography: Tim Suhrstedt Release date: August 24, 1990 (US) Cast: Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, Leslie Hope, Keith David, Darrell Larson, Dean Cameron, John Getz, Hawk Wolinski, John Lavachielli, Geoffrey Blake, Cameron Dye, John Putch, Tommy Hinkley, Sy Richardson, Kari Whitman. Box Office: $16.2M (US)
Rating: ***
Whenever I see my empty trash cans carelessly thrown in my front yard (or worse, my neighbor’s) on collection day, I wonder if Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez filled in for my regular trashmen that day. It’s all on account of Men at Work, the 1990 comedy starring the real-life brothers as a pair of rowdy garbagemen caught up in a conspiracy involving murder and illegal toxic waste dumping.
Carl (Sheen) and James (Estevez) dream of someday opening their own surf shop, but for now they’re stuck collecting trash for a living. Their noisy antics on their early morning route are funny as long as you don’t live in the area they service- i.e. the quiet little beach town of Las Playas. They toss cans with reckless abandon, high-five with metal lids and roll the occasional bowling ball down the street. All of this is annoying at any time of the day, but it’s worse in the early hours of the AM. This is why their boss sends an observer, crazed Vietnam Vet Louis (David, They Live), to keep an eye on them. Whether it couldn’t have come at a better or worse time is a matter of perspective.
On this day, the guys find a dead body stuffed in a can on their route. It belongs to a city councilman (Larson, Twice in a Lifetime) who earlier threatened to blow the whistle on the illegal dumping operation run by a prominent local businessman, Maxwell Potterdam III (Getz, The Fly). He has incriminating evidence on a cassette tape in his possession. Naturally, Maxwell has him killed.
The murder occurs in the apartment of his aide Susan (Hope, Talk Radio). She just happens to live across the way from Carl and James who frequently spy on her with binoculars. When they see the politician getting rough with her (over a switched tape), Carl shoots him in the ass with a pellet gun. What they don’t see are the two hitmen who show up moments later. They don’t see them kill the politician and take him away either. They’re too busy hiding and snickering. The bumbling killers lose the body while fleeing the scene of the crime. When the guys find the body later, they freak out. Louis remains calm commenting it “looks like somebody threw away a perfectly good white boy”.
What follows is a night of chaos starting with the guys holding onto the body a la Weekend at Bernie’s. Carl goes over to Susan’s place to gather info and they end up getting pretty cozy. James has to contend with an increasingly paranoid Louis who kidnaps a pizza delivery guy (Cameron, Summer School) because he’s “seen too much”. In the meantime, Maxwell’s goons try to find the body before it can be connected to him and his illegal activities.
A lot of Men at Work is funny, especially in the first half. There are a few memorable bits like their sarcastic “golf clap” in response to idle threats from a couple of ineffectual bike cops, Mike (Putch, One Day at a Time) and Jeff (Hinkley, Back to the Beach), always on their case. LOL! I still use that one actually. I guess it’s because they grew up together that Charlie and Emilio have an easy, natural chemistry with each other. Their banter feels totally unforced. This chemistry carries them through the movie’s uneven second half when it shifts into action-thriller mode.
Until that point, Men at Work is a mostly playful affair that shows us a typical day in the life of two sanitation engineers who enjoy surfing, picking up women and playing pranks involving exploding airbags of excrement on rival trashmen. It really hits its stride when Louis joins the team. He gets the lion’s share of the best lines including a diatribe about not touching another man’s French fries. Usually, there’s nothing funny about PTSD, but when he imagines Pizza Guy as a VC soldier, it’s too wrong to not be funny. And the way he neutralizes the two bike cops, it’s a sight gag you couldn’t get away with today. The PC Nazis would be all over that one. In short, David practically steals the show right from under Charlie and Emilio. Cameron also has some good moments as the unnamed Pizza Guy whose character ultimately becomes a poster child for Stockholm syndrome. Would you expect anything less from the dude once known as Chainsaw?
It’s been said that Men at Work makes a statement about polluting the environment with toxic waste and while I don’t doubt its sincerity, the message gets lost amidst the gags about poop, unstable vets and lugging around a dead body. The romance between Sheen and Hope’s characters is pretty standard stuff. Then it becomes an action movie that finds our two “heroes” hanging off the back of a moving truck at one point with the doors swinging open and shut. It’s a strange sight but okay, whatever. We weren’t promised a rose garden or anything remotely close to one.
In his second directorial effort, Estevez doesn’t do too badly. I actually liked his debut film Wisdom, but I’m definitely in the minority on that one. Men at Work works where it counts, it’s funny. To be more precise, it’s silly funny. It’s mindless with its juvenile pranks and sophomoric humor, but not so mindless that it insults the collective intelligence of the audience. It’s a good choice when looking for something that doesn’t tax the brain. Its two stars are comically gifted and it shows us the effectiveness of a golf clap when properly applied.
