Recognize them?
One guy with a crush. One hottie with a brain he's out to impress. One sociopathic school bully. One wild night full of dares that could potentially land the doer in jail. It's Dirty Deeds, the 2005 raunchy teen comedy that relies on the most basic of tropes and has the most predictable plot.
Full of Retroactive Recognition galore and a laughably exaggerated spin on the teen comedy genre, this movie follows Zach on his quest to win over his brainy beauty after her dorky younger brother agrees to take on the school bully by engaging in dares to prove he's tough. To get her brother off the hook, he does the deeds and ends up getting way more than he bargained for. . . like an ex criminal friend, a model's bra and most importantly, the girl. Cliches follow.
Dirty Deeds contains examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: Officer Dill actually leaves the protection of the entire student body to the jocks, and even refers to them as the leaders of the school. Law enforcement. Leaves the jocks. Who terrorize everyone. To make sure nobody does the Dirty Deeds. Let that sink in.
- An Aesop: Duncan Rime, who turns out to be Stash, gives a speech to the kids about how being cool in high school is generally worthless once you transition out of the high school bubble.
- An Arm and a Leg: Played for laughs with the elderly officer, especially when he falls victim to Male Gaze upon seeing Meg flash him to save Zach.
- Brainy Brunette: Meg, who is poised to be valedictorian.
- Call-Back: Jen announced that Rachel Buff is giving out awards the next day at the carnival. One of the deeds sees Zach having to get a homecoming queen's bra. Guess who he just happens to run into while at a bar?
- Dark and Troubled Past: Although Zach takes the heat from Principal Fuchs most of the time, Zach is pretty much the good evil. It's implied that this is because his father is not around, as evidenced from a conversation with Fuchs when he says he couldn't reach Zach's father.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Zach saves an elderly blind man from eating the bread he masturbated into and kidnaps an dead man with no family or friends for a deed.
- Jerkass: Dan Lawton and his band of equally horrible jocks. Also, Principal Fuchs for never punishing the jocks but always giving Zach a hard time and the amputee officer for racially targeting a Latino diner worker.
- Hypocritical Humor: One of the deeds sees Zach having to steal a homecoming queen's bra. He hits up a woman and asks, but she rebuffs him saying he's sick. Cut to her in dominatrix garb with her "slave."
- Karma Houdini: Dan Lawton, who literally gets away with every horrible thing he did in the movie.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Principal Fuchs eats Zach's masturbated bread. Then JD gets his car blown up after helping Lawton try to blow up the stage.
- Lovable Alpha Bitch: Jen, who is the only one who calls Lawton out for his BS and eventually gets fed up with his antics.
- Mood Whiplash: Everyone's whooping and clamoring for Zach, but then the deed that comes next, which is essentially impossible leads to Duncan Rime showing up and delivering An Aesop about the pointlessness of the Dirty Deeds and high school popularity.
- Police Are Useless: Officer Dill has every right to be suspicious of the catatonic man in the car with Zach and his friend, but does nothing when he sees the old man fall into Zach's friend's lap. He just looks disgusted and tells them to leave.
- Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Subverted. When the wigger kids talk about Duncan Rime, the black students behind them hear them and go, "Who talks like that?"
- The Reveal: Turns out, Duncan Rime is Stash the homeless man who Zach is friends with.
- Running Gag: Officer Dill attempted the Dirty Deeds but only got through one. Also, his last name spurs all the kids within earshot to turn it into a sex toy when he introduces himself. Also, the high school graduate who likes to make out with his underage girlfriends in the middle of traffic.
- Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: Lawton cheated on numerous occasions. He and his friends slashed his tires and falsely pretended to be someone else who was pretending to help him with a deed, only to lead him to elsewhere. Then, when Lawton sees Zach is completing the deeds, beat him up as he was leaving and then got JD to return for his revenge after Zach punched him. He later gets called out for this by his girlfriend.
- Surveillance as the Plot Demands: Seriously, why on earth are there cameras in the grocery store bathroom?
- Wild Teen Party: The party Biggs makes Bobby throw because jocks apparently make the nerdier kids throw parties against their wills.
