THE DIRT REVIEW: An endless shagfest of rock, rolling, drugs, and rollicking fun in biopic…

Based on Motley Crue’s 2001 best-selling autobiography of the same name and directed by Jackass co-creator Jeff Tremaine, The Dirt – which arrived on Friday on Netflix – ignores the most controversial scenes in the book, including one that recounts an incident at a party in which, unbeknownst to an unnamed victim, band member Nikki Sixx sneaks Lee and an anonymous teenager into a sexual scenario with the “slurring and stumbling” woman.

ABOVE: Netflix’s take on the infamous autobiography of the biggest “hair metal” band in the world, Motley Crue. Tommy Lee (Machine Gun Kelly), Nikki Sixx (Douglas Booth), Vince Neil (Daniel Webber), and Mick Mars (Iwan Rheon).

While the film’s synopsis describes it as “an unflinching tale of success and excess as four misfits rise from the streets of Hollywood to the heights of international fame.”

It is marketed as a “warts-and-all” retelling of the band’s rise and fall, its arrival will likely prompt questions, both on the timing of the film’s release in the shadow of the #MeToo movement and in its seeming disinterest in exploring the gang’s treatment of women (remember, it is the 80s).

Based on Motley Crue’s 2001 best-selling autobiography of the same name and directed by Jackass co-creator and director of the films, Jeff Tremaine. Consequently, “The Dirt” feels like “Jackass” film — or at least like the spiritual cousin of a “Jackass” film. It has the same sense of humor, the same tastelessness. It’s also just as entertaining, in the same guilty-pleasure way, and will, thus, likely appeal to the same target audience.

The Dirt – which arrived on Friday on Netflix – ignores the most controversial scenes in the book, including one that recounts an incident at a party in which, unbeknownst to an unnamed victim, band member Nikki Sixx sneaks Lee and an anonymous teenager into a sexual scenario with the “slurring and stumbling” woman.

ABOVE: The real Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee and Mick Mars of Motley Crue together with Alice Cooper in London.

The film is set within the Los Angeles scene that helped propel such bands as Guns N’ Roses, Quiet Riot and Poison to national prominence, The Dirt traces the lives of Crue members Sixx (Douglas Booth), Vince Neil (Daniel Webber), Mick Mars (Iwan Rheon) and Lee (Colson Baker, a.k.a. rapper Machine Gun Kelly) as they run wild through West Hollywood, and their unfortunate manager Pete Davidson as Tom Zutaut, an Elektra Records executive.

They’re shown gigging at clubs including the Whisky a Go Go, Starwood and Troubadour, working out stage moves, snorting mountains of coke and getting sexually serviced by young women at every turn. One groupie’s on-screen life occurs solely beneath a crowded table of men, where she awaits new arrivals with an offer of oral sex.

Considering the number of films we have coming our way from Hollywood at the moment, Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man,’ the film’s critical reception has been mixed.

While it’s been labeled as a satisfactory biopic for fans, some critics have touched on the film’s hesitation in handling the more troubling aspects of the band’s history.

It’s unquestionably misogynistic, and the sex and nudity are completely gratuitous for a Netflix Original. But since this is Mötley Crüe we’re talking about – a band with a song titled “Girls Girls Girls” – it’s probably just an uncomfortably accurate reconstruction of what life was like for them in their prime.

Mötley Crüe didn’t want to be the next band, following in the footsteps of Queen and so forth.

Mötley Crüe wanted to be the first Mötley Crüe.

And what emerged was a hard-rocking band with a carefully crafted image casting them as the bad boys of hair metal, four devil-may-care hell-raisers who embraced the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle and all of its self-destructive ego-maniac bucket load off F-you-the-world!

You know the stories, heard the tales, spoken to the Devil too about the TV tossed out of a hotel room window. The overdose. The deadly high-speed collision. And, of course, the girls, girls, girls.

All are covered in “The Dirt,” which, like the band, seems content to emphasize the bad behavior over the music. Although not rated, it does enough to earn a hard R within its first two minutes.

The leader, songwriter and bassist Nikki Sixx (Douglas Booth) narrates the opening scenes and much of the film, doubling back to share his painful adolescence and the origin of his self-destructive tendencies.

Just when things start to feel overly familiar, the film wisely makes a hard left turn and changes its narrator to co-founder and drummer Tommy Lee (Colson Baker), whose sunny, supportive parents and blissful California home offer a counterbalance to Sixx.

Fellow band members Mick Mars (Iwan Rheon) and Vince Neil (Daniel Webber) each get their turns narrating, too.

The approach keeps things fresh and fast-paced. Some things happen laughably fast – the naming of the band for example – but the pace is in line with the band’s energy and fast ascent.

From there, the film doubles down as it tells a story that is alternately entertaining and cringe-inducing, all the while basking in 1980s nostalgia glory the same way as another Netflix show “Stranger Things” embraces our love of 80s films.

It’s not all fun and games, though. “The Dirt” eventually strays into fairly dark territory, as the band members are each forced to confront their own mortality in one way or another. It’s there, as the hijinks are curtailed, that the film slows a bit. At the same time, it’s also there that it begins to flirt-however slightly with a sense of thoughtfulness and emotion.

The hard part about rock’n’roll biopics is they’re usually rags-to-riches and what-goes-up-must-come-down stories with a last-minute redemption. The inevitable pitfall of the genre is that the on-the-rise sequences are really fun and the hitting rock-bottom sequences are really not.

The Dirt is no different, it is just way much, more fun than any other biopic films that has come beforehand.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Did we just witness the first truly great biopic of a musical band, in a no-holds-bar tale?

Yes… we did.

The film does not attempt in any way to present a censored version of the band’s often raunchy past, and the exploits of Mötley Crüe are compelling enough to sustain much of the film, and The Dirt paints an honest picture of both the highs and lows of the men’s lives. Though it will not win any awards, the end manages to tie everything together in a satisfying enough manner.

The Dirt” was picked up by Netflix after being previously developed at Focus Features and before that at Paramount. Just one note, if didn’t have Netflix risk taking on ventures like this, then it would be a very dull world, indeed.

STARS 5/5