Men at Work

Estevez scripted, directed and stars, alongside brother Sheen, in this comic thriller about two Californian garbage collectors who find a dead body in one of their bins. Estevez must take the blame for the overall cheery incompetence, although the film, like the average dustbin of affluence, contains many fresh elements amid the trash. There's a groansome conservation theme (toxic dumping off a premier surfing beach), and an amazingly lively corpse (Darrell Larson doesn't let a little detail like rigor mortis inhibit a performance of extraordinary animation). This snigger-snigger attitude to death is matched by a general tastelessness. Sheen gloatingly spies on the woman living opposite, and there's a nasty running gag whereby the boys outwit, disarm, strip and handcuff pairs of policemen in compromising positions. But the grotesque practical jokes perpetrated against two interfering bumblers are genuinely funny, while Estevez and Sheen remain cutely goofy even when indulging themselves in this adolescent idiocy.