Themes: Work Ethics, Ladder to the Top, Success is the Best Revenge
Main Cast: Jeff Daniels
Release Year: 2002
Country: US
Run Time: 91 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Clean carpets and dirty minds find a common ground in this comedy written, directed, produced, and distributed by leading man Jeff Daniels. Fred Barlow (Daniels) is a hapless door-to-door salesman who scrapes together a living selling and distributing the Super Sucker Home Cleaning System, a deluxe vacuum cleaning unit, in the small Michigan community of Johnson City. While Barlow and his dedicated but inept staff believe in their product, they don't have much luck in actually moving the merchandise, and hotshot fellow distributor Winslow Schnaebelt (Harve Presnell) is eager to take over Barlow's territory. Super Sucker prexy Cy Suckerton II (John Lepard), tired of the squabbling between Barlow and Schnaebelt, decides to settle the matter once and for all with a contest -- whoever sells the most vacuums in 30 days will have all of Johnson City to themselves. Barlow and his right-hand-man Howard Butterworth (Matt Letscher) try to gear up their staff to make an all-out sales assault on Johnson City, but it turns out that the deciding factor may well be the "Housewife's Little Helper," a little-used vacuum attachment for "cleaning those hard-to-reach places" which Barlow discovers has a surprising use that has nothing to do with sweeping the rug. Super Sucker also features a guest appearance by Dawn Wells (Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island) as the official Super Sucker spokesperson; longtime Bob Seger sideman Alto Reed contributed to the film's soundtrack. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
As a writer, Jeff Daniels obviously did his homework for Super Sucker. He masterfully portrays the world of door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen, and finds just the right mixture of unctuous, desperate, and likable in Fred Barlow to make him a believable salesperson. For its first 20 minutes, the film works as a comedy of manners. Sadly the film takes too long to get to the big joke, that Barlow and his crew discover that their machine can be used as a sex toy and begin to sell it that way to housewives. While this is a funny set-up, the film is far too timid to play up the bawdier aspects of the screenplay. The best scene in the film involves Barlow and his wife lying together in bed. Late in the film he is pouring out all his self-doubt about what he has done to his wife, who ignores him because she is enjoying the product. That scene is the only one that strikes the right tone. The material is so outlandish that all of the characters need to be played realistically. Sadly almost every performance other than Daniels' feels pitched for the stage and not the screen. The mugging and yelling overwhelm the difficult balance the film needs to maintain to work. Like his first film, Escanaba in da Moonlight, Daniels shows he has a great understanding for people and the places they live and work, but he has trouble shaping an engaging story. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
Filmed in Jackson, Michigan, Daniels and Presnell play Fred Barlow and Winslow Schnaebelt, the heads of two different groups of door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen who are competing for the same territory. Their rivalry becomes so fierce that the president of the manufacturer of the product, Mr. Suckerstein, decides that for the good of the company, the town will have only one group of sales representatives. Desperate, and always the underdog, Barlow suggests a winner-take-all sales contest to determine who gets the territory. Well behind Schnaebelt from the very start, Barlow's sales surge when he learns of his wife's non-traditional use of a long forgotten vacuum attachment.
The movie, written by Daniels, won the 2002 U.S. Comedy Arts Festival audience award for Best Feature but never obtained national distribution.
