The two movies don't have anything to do with each other, as you can probably tell from these posters.
Point of clarification -- A Low Down Dirty Shame was not "perfectly good" in any sense of the word other than I am using it here. The title was one of the things that drew me to it, and I also liked Keenen Ivory Wayans, but it was a pretty big disappointment.
I didn't have a chance to be disappointed by A Dirty Shame when I watched it on Thursday night because I remembered its reviews at the time and that critics did not like it. Then again, when has John Waters ever cared what critics thought? The person who made Pink Flamingoes -- which I think is absolutely terrible -- would never have made Pink Flamingoes if he cared one iota about basing the longevity of his career on the praise of critics.
Given that I knew it was going to be bad, I actually liked A Dirty Shame slightly better than I would have expected -- and not just because I've always liked Selma Blair, and seeing her with obviously fake giant breasts was a little bit titillating. (Talk about dirty shames.)
To be clear, though, it's not a good movie.
How to decide which is worse, A Dirty Shame or A Low Down Dirty Shame? To decide which movie should feel more shame? To decide which movie should feel more dirty?
Well obviously the word "dirty" is being used differently here. In Waters' movie, it's "dirty" in the way of "dirty movies." Since it is about people who show signs of instant sex addiction after receiving trauma to the head, it is a smutfest from start to finish, and that's just the way Waters likes it.
To refresh myself on the particulars of A Low Down Dirty Shame, which my records tell me I saw in November of 2002, I had to go to its Wikipedia page. Ah yes. Writer-director Wayans plays Andre Shame, a private investigator who runs A Low Down Dirty Shame Investigations. So I guess maybe the movie doesn't find itself either dirty or shameful, but that's for me to decide.
And since they are not using the terms the same way, how will I decide which film is more of a dirty shame? Really, I can only figure out which one is worse.
I have my guesses, but I will let Flickchart decide.
Without first consulting the position of A Low Down Dirty Shame on my Flickchart -- though I know it's pretty low -- I'll break my usual rules for delaying adding movies to Flickchart by at least a month and I will pop A Dirty Shame on there right now. Only after I'm done ranking will I check the ranking of A Low Down Dirty Shame, which is the only way I can be sure of not subconsciously influencing the outcome. (Though you could argue that if I were subconsciously influencing the outcome, that would tip my hand about which film I like better, thereby accomplishing the same goal.)
Okay I'm back now. Did you miss me?
I sent A Dirty Shame on its Flickchart journey and it ended up at 5562 out of 6356 movies, good for the 12th percentile on my chart. It's possible it could have been lower, but some of the movies in this area are ranked a bit funny. For example, it ended up right next to Kick-Ass 2, and I thought I liked that movie okay. (No, as it turns out I gave Kick-Ass 2 only two stars on Letterboxd, same as A Dirty Shame.)
Now let's see where A Low Down Dirty Shame sits ...
Well that would be 5930/6356, good for 7th percentile.
And maybe this is correct in terms of their relative positions, even if I think this might be a bit of a harsh assessment of Wayans' movie. Even if I don't always vibe with Waters, I do appreciate his anarchic approach to filmmaking and his perennial goal of tweaking the squares. A Low Down Dirty Shame may have had more merits as a film in certain senses, but the disappointment with it was real, especially since, as I recall, Wayans doesn't even attempt to be funny in it.
However, I should note, I also gave this movie two stars on Letterboxd, at least retroactively.
So we may have to leave it to history to decide which is truly the more shameful dirt.
And that's all I have to say about that.
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