User Reviews

Their utterly dismal, lazy, minimalist existence is the perfect setting for the high-stress drama that falls into their laps, and the addition of Keith David as a veteran having flashbacks as he terrorizes the two main characters in an attempt to help them is pure comedy gold. This is the working week answer to Weekend at Bernie's.

Low effort humor that fails over and over to be funny, ridiculously overused character stereotypes (crazed veteran, slacker heroes, establishment represented by clean cut jerk cops, 'feisty' woman who's not quite feisty enough to tell her stalker to get lost, or to not get kidnapped and be the motivation for the slacker hero to hero it up), hack written 'romance' that blossoms from the usual creepy beginnings of that type, such as stalking and breaking into her apartment and lying about who he is when he's caught, and a plot that aspires to paper thin. Why didn't the politician go straight to the police? Why didn't the killers kill him right away? Why didn't they leave the body on the ground once they discovered it had been strangled, therefore leaving them out of it? Why didn't the love interest call the cops a thousand times between finding a stranger in her house and being locked into a can to be murdered? It's a lazy movie in every sense of the word, and I turned it off after just short of an hour - which is about half an hour after I stopped watching and started wandering around the house getting things done. Yes, even as background noise this thing is too stupid to tolerate.

A guilty pleasure if ever there was one, Men at Work sees Carl (Charlie Sheen) and James (Emilio Estevez) as two no hoper surfers/garbage men who pipe dream about opening their own surf shop. Carl has a slightly disturbed habit of spying on his neighbors with binoculars and "seriously aggravating situations without changing the course of history" by occasionally shooting them with a pellet gun.

After an evening of beer and Trivial Pursuit, Carl and James witness City Councilman Jack Berger (Darrell Larson) seemingly assaulting his campaign manager Susan Wilkins (Leslie Hope) in her apartment across the street. As she runs out Carl shoots Berger with the pellet gun. He and James miss two men then strangle Berger and leave with his body. The following day they happen across Berger's discarded corpse on their garbage route, and, fearing they may be implicated in the murder, hide the body. Madcap antics ensure as they try to figure out who killed Berger and why.

There's lots to like in this silly comedy, from the inept hit men whose car bears the licence plates: HIT MEN, to the recurring joke of the misplaced tape (work it, work it), and the great chemistry between the two leads. But the highlight is Keith David as Louis, Carl and James' boss' brother in law who rides along with them in the garbage truck as an observer (as they are known troublemakers and on probation at work) and becomes mixed up in the movie's ensuing chaos. David is perfect as the unhinged Vietnam veteran, and from the sight gag of him doodling a helicopter firing missiles at innocent families on a boardwalk, to the infamous "another man's fries" line, to the hilarious kidnapping of the pizza boy "he was provokin me!" the character is a constant source of laughs.

Leave your brain at the door and enjoy.

This is one of those movies that I watch every time it's on not because I like it, but because it's so bad I can't take my eyes off it (like "Battlefield Earth" or "3000 Miles to Graceland"). The first time I watched I kept waiting and waiting and waiting to laugh and didn't get my chance until about 3/4 of the way through the movie when they strip the harassing cops to their undies and handcuff them in the park in a unflattering position. Beyond that, the jokes aren't funny, the characters aren't funny, their mishaps and missteps aren't funny...add it up, it's not a very funny movie! Not even at a slapstick level! And what's with the reggae soundtrack? It's a movie about two white garbagemen and the music is all reggae. Seems out of place, don't it? If you like a good trainwreck, this is for you. If you like a good comedy, look elsewhere.

There seems to be really little point to this movie. To me it is a movie that Esteves put together just for a little bit of fun. He plays alongside Charlie Sheen who is his real life brother and this seems to work well. They are buddies and living life just for the pleasure of it. In fact, James (Esteves) and Carl (Sheen) have been life long buddies: they went to school together, they surf together, and they work together. The name of the town that the film is set in, Las Palayas, sounds to me like some place where people go and have fun. Serious this movie is not, and there are so many holes that a serious movie would fall down, while this movie manages to stand on its own.

The plot is simple though the story becomes really complicated. In real life, everybody would be locked up in gaol for kidnapping, assault on a law enforcement officer, theft of a police car, hindrance of police, stalking, and second degree murder. As I said, this movie is not serious. Here the cops are stupid and everybody hates them, and they only exist to make the life of the main characters a nightmare. Somehow, the main characters also seem to be able to work a very demanding job yet also have enough time to surf and stay up late only to wake up at five in the morning.

There is a plot though it doesn't start up until a fair way into the movie. Esteves spends a lot of time just following James and Carl around on their daily routine, and it is only after this that he begins to move the plot along. Basically somebody is dumping toxic waste off shore and a mayoral candidate is being paid to allow this to happen. The candidate decides that what he is doing is wrong and pulls out, but not before getting a recording of the conversation to incriminate the bad guy. The candidate is then killed and dumped in a garbage can which James and Carl find. This wouldn't be a problem except Carl shot the candidate with an air rifle the night before and did not realise that he was murdered.

This rather relaxed movie raises the idea of environmental protection, though this seems really ironic as the main characters are garbo's who dump huge amounts of garbage in landfill. They are stopping this one man from dumping toxic waste only to do it themselves. Still, this movie doesn't go beyond a final embarrassment of the bad guy, and thus any repercussions do not exist.

...Never mess with another man's French fries!

Writer / director Emilio Estevez and his real-life brother Charlie Sheen are engaging as a pair of not terribly ambitious garbage men who want a little more out of life but don't do much about it. One day on their route, they discover the dead body of city councilman Jack Berger (Darrell Larson) inside a barrel. Berger, a fairly corrupt man who'd been in league with a toxic waste dumper, Maxwell Potterdam III (John Getz), had developed some scruples and decided to blow the whistle, so arrogant rich jerk Potterdam has his two (not terribly competent) thugs kill Berger. While all of this is going on, James (Estevez) and Carl (Sheen) are in trouble for their escapades while on the job, so their boss has assigned his own brother-in-law to keep an eye on them. The trouble there is, the brother-in-law is an absolutely nutty Vietnam veteran (the hysterical Keith David, who walks away with the movie) who actually keeps getting the guys into more and more trouble. You see, he HATES cops, and REALLY hates rent-a-cops. Overall, "Men at Work" is a pretty successful comedy, and one particularly amusing thing is the way Estevez has created various pairs of characters: Frost and Luzinski (Geoffrey Blake and Cameron Dye), two fellow garbage men forever locked in a war of practical jokes with James and Carl, the two moronic hit men, Biff and Mario (Hawk Wolinski and John Lavachielli), and the two smug, self-important cops Mike and Jeff (John Putch and Tommy Hinkley) who look down on James and Carl and assume them to be no-goods. The only problem is, most of the characters, while funny, aren't nearly as funny as Louis (David), and it may make one impatient to get back to any and all scenes with him. Try not to crack up at some of the things he does - such as his recurring motif whenever he incapacitates victims, or his reaction to the voices he hears at one point. He also has most if not all of the best lines, especially "The Commie bastard gets no food!" and "Ah, lookie here, somebody threw away a perfectly good white boy!". "Men at Work" does work as farce quite well in the way things just keep going from bad to worse, and there is some brief, priceless "Weekend at Bernie's" type humour with Berger's corpse (which is made to wear a Richard Nixon mask). The actors all do a good job, with Leslie Hope as the female lead, an attractive campaign manager and love interest for Carl, and Dean Cameron as the put upon pizza delivery guy. Getz is hilariously unsubtle as the ultra sleazy criminal, who gets an awfully goofy comeuppance at the end. "Men at Work" is good, undemanding, "check your brain at the door" comedy that entertains well for a solid 99 minutes. Seven out of 10.

Carl and James are two unambitious garbage men. Carl has a telescope with which he observes his neighbours. One evening he sees a man giving his girlfriend a hard time.

As she leaves he shoots the man with a pellet gun. Hiding, he and James miss two men strangling the man and leaving with the body.

When he appears in a can on their route they are afraid and hide the body, fearing that they may be implicated in the death.

Trying to crack the case, they spy on the woman, join up with a crazed Vietnam vet, kidnap a pizza man and help to protect the environment. After all, it's the nineties.

When global warming was rife, and the world was going to end, or we would have to have an atmosphere like Highlander 2, Estevez decided to make a comedy, with a hint of global awareness.

It's one of those random weird comedies that were released around this time, Weekend At Bernies springs to mind, and you know that you shouldn't enjoy it, but you do, because the film makers brainwash you.

The two leads have great chemistry, well they should after all. The music in the film is popular music of that time or very recent, so this gives you a comfort zone.

And then it's sunny all the time, Women are beautiful, and garbage men can afford to stay in nice apartments and drink in the afternoon, all in the world is good.

Add all theses ingredients with some bad guys you know are going to lose, and the film is a safe bet to entertain, not amaze, but entertain.

And it does, it never out stays its welcome,a nd the humour never gets too immature.

It won't be on anyones favourite list, but when it crops up on TV, I bet a few people will be transmitted back to the early nineties, with fond memories.