The film was the first starring vehicle for Macdonald and Lange and the first feature film directed by Saget, coming one year after he left his long-running role as host of America's Funniest Home Videos.
Though the film received broadly negative reviews from critics and earned low box office returns, it has become a cult classic. Co-star Artie Lange later became a regular on The Howard Stern Show, where the film was sometimes discussed.
Plot:Growing up, friends Mitch Weaver (Norm Macdonald) and Sam McKenna (Artie Lange) are taught by Sam's hard-nosed dad Pops McKenna (Jack Warden) not to "take crap from anyone". To that end, the pair plant a bunch of guns on a bully and have him arrested for gun possession and catch a kid-fondling crossing guard in the act with glue.
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. In the hospital, Pops confides that, because of their parents' swinging lifestyle, he is also Mitch's father. Even though Pops' heart is failing, Dr. Farthing (Chevy Chase), a hopeless gambler, will only raise his position on the transplant waiting list if he is paid $50,000, to save him from his bookie. Mitch and Sam get jobs in a cinema with an abusive manager (Don Rickles) and exact their revenge by showing "Men In Black (Who Like To Have Sex With Each Other)" to a packed house. The other workers congratulate them and suggest they go into business.
Mitch and Sam open "Dirty Work", a revenge-for-hire business (the Dirty Work phone number is "555-0187," a fictitious number used later on Saturday Night Live.) . Mitch falls for a woman named Kathy (Traylor Howard) who works for a shady used car dealer (David Koechner). After publicly embarrassing the dealer during a live TV commercial, the duo exacts increasingly lucrative reprisals for satisfied customers until they interfere with unscrupulous local property developer Travis Cole (Christopher McDonald). Cole tricks them into destroying "his" apartment building (actually owned by Mr. John Kirkpatrick, the landlord), promising to pay them enough to save Pops. Afterwards, Cole reneges, revealing that he is not the owner and that he had them vandalize the building so that he could buy it cheaply, evict the tenants (including Kathy's grandmother), and build a parking lot for his luxurious new opera house. Unknown to Cole, Mitch's "note to self" mini-tape recorder captures this confession.
Mitch and Sam plot their revenge on Cole, using the tape to set up an elaborate trap. Using skunks, an army of prostitutes, homeless men, a noseless friend (Chris Farley), brownies with hallucinogenic additives, and Pops, they ruin the opening night of Don Giovanni, an opera sponsored prominently by Cole. With the media present, Mitch plays back Cole's confession over the theater's sound system. Cole sees that his public image is being tarnished and agrees to pay the $50,000. In the end, Cole is punched in the stomach, arrested and jailed, his dog is raped by a skunk, Pops gets his operation, and Mitch gets the girl. Dr. Farthing overcomes his gambling habit but is beaten to death by bookies in the end.