Men at Work (1990)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Best movie ever!

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Starring the two brothers Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez Men at work is a barely remembered comedy and rightly so- It is an okay effort featuring the then upcoming actors. There are few laughs thrown around but by and large it is a largely forgotten movie.

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.

Carl Taylor (Charlie Sheen) and James St. James (Emilio Estevez) are two slacker garbage men who dream of their own surf shop. Then they get saddled with the bosses' angry brother-in-law Louis Fedders (Keith David). Meanwhile politician Berger had taped his conversation with the corrupt business owner Maxwell Potterdam III (John Getz) about their illegal dumping conspiracy. A couple of goons kills him, but they retrieve the wrong tape and lose the body after it falls off their car. The garbage men find the body. In an unlikely coincidence, Carl had shot him with a pellet gun the night before. Now they're not sure what to do and it's "Weekend at Bernie's" time. They think the girlfriend Susan Wilkins (Leslie Hope) is involved and the bumbling group tries to investigate. When the pizza guy (Dean Cameron) sees the body, Louis kidnaps him.It's an oddity to see the brothers working together in a movie written and directed by Emilio Estevez. It tries to be funny but the writing is not there. There are a couple of slightly wacky characters with a few funny lines. It could have worked if either brother put in an outrageous performance. When the jokes on the page aren't good enough, a special kind of performer is needed to make up the jokes on the fly. It has a couple of moments but there are not enough of them to be truly funny.

Men at Work (1990) *** (out of 4) Emilio Estevez wrote and directed this comedy, which also has him playing the lead along with his brother Charlie Sheen. In the film the two play garbage men who dream of setting up their own surf shop but when they find the body of a man running for Mayor they get involved in a political cover up. If you're looking for some sort of high art or masterpiece of cinema then you're certainly looking in the wrong place. If you just want some cheap, juvenile fun then MEN AT WORK is just for you. I remember being 10-years-old when I first watched this movie and I found it hilarious then and it continues to be a very funny, if incredibly stupid little film. I think what the film has going it its favor is the terrific cast who really dig into their roles. Both Estevez and Sheen have no problem playing together as they have a certain chemistry that could only come from real brothers. It's funny seeing the two work together because you can tell that they know how to bounce off one another and it's clear they know which buttons to push. The screenplay leaves a lot to be desired and you can't help but feel that the two actors make a mediocre story and at least put some energy to it. Another major plus is the supporting performance of David Keith who plays a crazy Vietnam vet who tags along with the two men the day the body is discovered. Keith is hilarious in his scenes and it really pre-dates the type of character he would eventually play in THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY. Just check out the sequence where he has a flashback to his Vietnam days and takes it out on a pizza man. Even Leslie Hope as the love interest comes off well. The biggest thing working against the film is its screenplay because it's just a tad bit too silly for its own good. We get the typical, low-rent type of comedy including the garbage men going up against a couple jerk cops, doing battle with some co-workers and of course there's the hit men that are idiots. MEN AT WORK is certainly far from a classic but it contains some of that 80s comedy that was slowly making its way out of movies by 1990.