Joe Dirt

Plot

Joe Dirt is a janitor at 98.6 KXLA, a Los Angeles-based radio station, and is brought before a shock jock named Zander Kelly who speaks of his life story while on the air. Joe reveals that as a baby he had a mullet wig installed because the top of his skull had never formed. At age 8, he was left behind by his parents and sister at the Grand Canyon and thus does not know his real surname. After growing up in a series of foster homes, Joe ran away until he arrived in Silvertown, a small chicken town in Idaho. There, he met Brandy and her dog, Charlie, and became a target of jealousy from Robby, the town bully, who also vied for Brandy's affection. After Brandy's alcoholic father shoots Charlie dead after a hunting accident that cost him his leg, Joe decides to try to find his parents.

He details his adventures across the country including discovering what he believed to be a meteorite, only to discover it was solid excrement buildup that fell from a commercial airplane. He invertedly took a hot air balloon to North Dakota where he took a job at an oil well while making enemies with a wildcatter. He even made friends with Kickin' Wing, an unsuccessful Native American fireworks salesman in New Mexico while acquiring a list of names for those on the 1979 Grand Canyon tour. Afterward, he met a woman named Jill while working on the fairground and while dating her, he learned about her time being separated from her parents, assuming it was his sister. In Indiana, Joe has an encounter with a serial killer named Buffalo Bob, who is parodying the lotion scene from The Silence of the Lambs. After Buffalo Bob is arrested, this event brought Joe unwanted attention from the media but helps his search.

Joe discovered his roots started in Louisiana where he went to next. There he took a job as a high school janitor working with Clem Doore, a former mobster in the Witness Protection Program. Clem rescues students after a mustard gas explosion and informs the media Joe was the hero. Joe then revealed Clem to be the hero, unaware that the Mafia wanted his head. Clem managed to survived the encounter and tipped Joe on the vehicle that his parents used, the Rambler Wagon, to be extremely rare. While traveling on further he came across an alligator farm and met the owner, Charlene. Looking to make money, he was hired to be an alligator wrangler for audiences. After one encounter with an alligator in which he landed wrong, he had an epiphany about his little sister yelling at Joe about why his last name was Dirt and not his real surname Nunamaker. Upon realizing his real last name, Joe discovers the address of his old family home and he travels to Baton Rouge, only to find that they moved away many years prior. Listening to Joe's story, both Zander and the radio audience initially find him an object of scorn, but Joe's kindness and optimistic outlook on life win them over.

Soundtrack

*Bonus track not featured in film

Songs not featured on the soundtrack album

.38 Special – "Hold on Loosely" (1981)

Bob Seger – "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" (1968)

Dave Matthews Band – "Crash into Me" (1996)

The Doobie Brothers – "Listen to the Music" (1972)

Eddie Money – "Think I'm in Love" (1982)

Foghat – "I Just Want to Make Love to You" (1972)

George Clinton – "Atomic Dog" (1982)

George Thorogood – "Bad to the Bone" (1982)

James Gang – "Funk#49" (1970)

Leif Garrett – "I Was Made for Dancin'" (1977)

Lynyrd Skynyrd – "That Smell" (1977)

Thin Lizzy – "Jailbreak" (1976)

Three Dog Night – "Shambala" (1973)

Van Halen – "Everybody Wants Some" (1980)

Reception

Box office

Joe Dirt opened at #4 in the domestic box office with $8,016,008 and went on to gross $27,087,695 domestically and $3,900,000 in other territories for a worldwide total of $30,987,695; from an estimated $17.7 million budget. Since movies typically have to gross twice their budget due to marketing and distribution costs, the movie was probably a financial loss.

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 9% of 75 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 3.1/10. The website's consensus reads: "If you fall within the target audience of Joe Dirt, you may find it funny. Otherwise, the jokes will seem like a tired retread." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 20 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B−.

Ebert and Roeper both gave the film a thumbs down. Richard Roeper criticized the film for being too predictable and strained, and said that the radio station storyline was "absurd". Roger Ebert agreed, but praised Spade for taking on a different role than he is normally associated with, and added that Spade's performance was convincing, despite the film's other shortcomings. Ebert included Joe Dirt as one of his most hated films of all time under the category of "alleged comedies," stating that, "What movies, including Joe Dirt, often do not understand is that the act of being buried in crap is not in and of itself funny."

Home media

The film gained a cult following, with it being one of the most watched films on Crackle and leading to the development of the sequel.

Cancelled TV series

In early 2010, Spade worked on a pilot with TBS for an animated series based on the film. However, the series never materialized.

In August 2026, an animated series was announced as being in development at Fox, written by Scott Gairdner, with Spade returning.

Sequel

In 2014, Spade revealed in a Reddit question that he was writing a sequel to Joe Dirt for Crackle. Entertainment Weekly has noted that the film is "the first ever made-for-digital sequel". Filming on the sequel began on November 17, 2014, with David Spade posting a first look at Joe Dirt on his Instagram. The film was released in July 2015 and received similarly negative reviews.