The film was the first starring vehicle for Macdonald and Lange, and the directorial debut of Saget, coming one year after he left his long-running role as host of America's Funniest Home Videos.

[1] Upon its theatrical release on June 12, 1998 by MGM, Dirty Work received largely negative critical reviews and was a disappointment at the box office.

As adults, after losing fourteen jobs in three months and being dumped by his girlfriend, Mitch moves in with Sam and Pops, who then has a heart attack.

Even though Pops' heart is failing, Dr. Farthing, a hopeless gambler, will raise Mr. McKenna's position on the transplant waiting list if he is paid $50,000, to save himself from his bookie.

After publicly embarrassing the dealer during a live television commercial, the duo exacts increasingly lucrative reprisals for satisfied customers until they interfere with unscrupulous local property developer Travis Cole.

Cole tricks them into destroying "his" apartment building (actually owned by Mr. John Kirkpatrick, the landlord), promising to pay them enough to save Pops.

Using skunks, a loyal army of prostitutes, homeless men, a noseless friend, brownies with hallucinogenic additives, and Pops, they ruin the opening night of Don Giovanni, an opera sponsored prominently by Cole.

[2] In his first appearance on The Howard Stern Show on September 18, 2008,[3] Chevy Chase discussed the film's production and release with Artie Lange.

Lange said the studio insisted on a PG-13 rating and moved the film's release from the February dump months to June, where it fared poorly against blockbusters like Godzilla.

[10] The Los Angeles Times described it as "a tone-deaf, scattershot and dispiritingly cheesy affair with more groans than laughs", and though Macdonald "does uncork a few solid one-liners", his lack of conviction in his acting "is amusing in and of itself, but it doesn't help the movie much".

[14][15] In his column, My Year of Flops, critic Nathan Rabin describes Dirty Work as an example of "the ironic dumb comedy, the slyly postmodern lowbrow gag-fest that so lustily, nakedly embraces and exposes the machinations and conventions of stupid laffers that it becomes a sort of sublime bit of meta-comedy".