“Nobody likes a dirty girl.” This preachy sentiment overshadows a coming-of-age comedy that doesn’t know its ass from a hole in the ground. Juno Temple is Danielle, a white-trash, slutty high school student living in an anachronistic ’80s-era Oklahoma town.
At home, Danielle suffers all forms of indignation at the hand of her mom’s Mormon boyfriend Ray (William H. Macy). During her detention period class at school Danielle gets saddled with lugging around a five-pound bag of flour that represents the baby she is doomed to create if she keeps putting out like there’s no tomorrow.
The assignment for flour-baby’s teen dad goes to a very gay and chubby misfit classmate named Clarke (Jeremy Dozier). Clarke’s hillbilly dad (Dwight Yoakam) wants to curb his son’s gayness at any cost. Clarke’s overwrought mom Peggy (Mary Steenburgen) is equally traumatized by her son’s sexual proclivity, but at least she’s protective.
The movie feints at a storyline when Clarke and Danielle take off in Clarke’s dad’s car in search of Danielle’s biological father. A hunky hitchhiker (played by Nicholas D’Agosto) provides Clarke with a fleeting moment of erotic fulfillment. The filmmakers lose track of the flour-baby subplot; oh, that. It rolls around the back seat of the car, even though it supposedly has something to do with Danielle’s predictable revelation that she shouldn’t go around with every boy in school.
“Dirty Girl” is such an inept attempt at abstinence propaganda that it ought to have the opposite effect on teen girls chomping at the bit. If nobody likes a dirty girl, why do they get so much action?
Rated R. 90 mins.
