Stay Tuned (1992) is an American film directed by Peter Hyams. It starred John Ritter, Pam Dawber, Jeffrey Jones, and Eugene Levy. Despite its lackluster release, it became a cult film in the following years.
Plot
John Ritter (of Three's Company fame) plays Roy Knable, a couch potato and struggling Seattle plumbing salesman, and Pam Dawber (of Mork & Mindy fame) plays his neglected wife Helen, a senior Vitamin product manager. After a fight (which involved Helen throwing one of Roy's fencing trophies into the family television, smashing the screen and matrix as a wake-up call to reality), Mr. Spike (Jeffrey Jones) appears at the couples' door, offering him a high tech new satellite dish system filled with 666 channels of every program you can't get on the four big networks (CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox).
The dish soon sucks Roy and Helen into a hellish television world, full of satirical shows and movies. In some shows, the Knables are transformed into various roles and forms that fit the plot of the movie they happen to be in at the time. If they can survive for 24 hours, they're free to go, but if they get killed, their souls will go to Satan. They are pursued by Mr. Spike (also known as "Mephistopheles of the Cathode Ray") who enters some shows along with the Knables in order to halt their advance; he too takes on alternate forms that reflect the themes of the various shows. Roy and Spike continue to fight throughout several shows, even in a cloak-and-dagger scenario where Roy displays a long-buried talent as college fencer.
Salt-n-Pepa make a cameo appearance near the end of the film in a "Hell TV" (MTV) segment. Mr. Spike, the DJ in that segment of the film, throws bladed-records at Roy Knable (dressed in a satirical Prince outfit). However, Roy dodges them all and confronts Spike, winning back the remote, and uses it to save his wife from being run over by a train. At the end of the movie, Spike is succeeded in his soul-gaining job by a new upstart employee and gets torn apart in one of his hellish TV scenarios for punishment. Roy, who had learned a very valuable lesson after his adventure, has dramatically cut back on his TV viewing time and has taken up teaching in a fencing class.
Reception
The film was not screened for film critics.[1] The film received mixed reviews.
Stephen Holden of The New York Times called the film a "cleverly plotted movie" based on a "nifty satiric concept" but said that "most of its takeoffs ... show no feel for genre and no genuine wit."[3] Holden liked only two of the film's sketches, "a cartoon created by the noted animator Chuck Jones, in which the Knables are turned into mice menaced by a nearly indestructible feline called RoboCat" and one which "finds Roy in drag pursued by the devil in an elaborate music video by the female rap duo Salt-n-Pepa."[3]
Rita Kempley of the Washington Post called the film "wonderfully silly" and a "zippy action spoof."[4]
Variety magazine said the film was "not diabolical enough for true black comedy, too scary and violent for kids lured by its PG rating and witless in its sendup of obsessive TV viewing...a picture with nothing for everybody"; it noted that the "six-minute cartoon interlude by the masterful Chuck Jones, with Ritter and Dawber portrayed as mice menaced by a robot cat...has a grace and depth sorely lacking in the rest of the movie."[1]
Time Out called it "pointless 'satire'" with the "emotional depth of a 30-second soap commercial."[5]
Parodies
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Some film and TV show parodies include:
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Other shows:
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References
- ^ a b c d e f g h Review of Stay Tuned from Variety
- ^ Stay Tuned at Box Office Mojo
- ^ a b c d e Bedeviled Suburbanites With a 24-Hour Deadline, an August 15, 1992 review from The New York Times
- ^ a b c d Review of Stay Tuned, an August 18, 1992 review from the Washington Post
- ^ Review of Stay Tuned from the Time Out Film Guide
External links
