Joe Dirt - Reception

Reception

The film's critical reception has been generally negative. The film has an average rating of 3 out of 10 with an 11% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus stating, "If you fall within the target audience of Joe Dirt, you may find it funny. Otherwise, the jokes will seem like a tired retread." Joe Dirt barely earned back its $34 million budget at the box office, but went on to have high DVD sales. It has since been described as a cult classic, having been shown quite frequently in edited form on Comedy Central and TBS for the past several years.

Ebert and Roeper both gave the film a thumbs down. Richard Roeper called the comedy for being 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. That being said, Ebert would go on to include Joe Dirt as one of his most hated films of all time under the category of "alleged comedies" and going on to state, "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."

The second verse of "Weird Al" Yankovic's Close but No Cigar from his album Straight Outta Lynwood contains the lyrics "I thought after all these years of searching around, I'd found my soulmate finally/But one day I found out she actually owned a copy of Joe Dirt on DVD...", implying that her owning a copy of the DVD prompted the protagonist to end the relationship.