Men at Work (1990)

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

The first must-see film of the year.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

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.

Emilio Estevez directs & co-stars in this 1990 action-comedy with Charlie Sheen, Leslie Hope, Keith David, Dean Cameron, Darrel Larson and John Getz. Sheen (Major League) and Estevez (The Breakfast Club) play garbage men, Carl Taylor and James St. James. Soon, they stumble onto an environmental conspiracy after they find dead politician, Jack Berger (Larson) in a trash can along their route. Hope plays Berger's campaign manager, Susan Wilkins who meets and gets romantically involved with Carl, David (They Live) plays Louis Fedders, a war vet who is assigned to work with Carl & James, Cameron (Summer School) plays a pizza man who gets taken hostage by Louis and Getz (The Fly) plays corrupt businessman, Maxwell Potterdam III who dumps waste and is the one behind Berger's murder. This is a good action-comedy, Sheen & Estevez are great in it together and Getz plays a good villain. I recommend this.

This movie is bad as we all knew it would be. Most times i usually love the bad 80s / early 90s trash-can comedy (haha no pun intended). I list Ski School, Career opportunities, Hot Shots, Summer School and many more made around this time. This even has the classic yet forgotten comedy of Dean Cameron (aka.. ski School section 8 instructor and Party Maniac for Summer School). But this movie is just to slow. It takes almost 30 min to get going and we have to sit through pointless dialog between to half-wits the Sheen boys (E&C). And yes i can hear the bloggers dieing to trash me with "obviously you don't watch 2 and 1/2 men). Well Charlie was not at the level he is now during this flick...not that he's anything worth watching now. Charlie only shines when his co-stars support him and Emilio isn't anymore than an overused wonder bra offering little support. Actually, this movie was written by Emilio and it shows. It has no real ending (come on Emilio, even the Ski School 2 writers barfed out an ending). No idea how any issue brought is solved, no hot babes, no swearing to lighten the bad plot, characters, acting... I'm now tired of this tirade. Just save your time and watch the movies i listed above. You'll enjoy them much more.