The Stupids is a 1996 comedy/adventure film directed by John Landis. The film is based on The Stupids, characters from a series of books written by Harry Allard and illustrated by James Marshall.
The story tells the adventures of the fictional family Stupids, whose last name coincidentally describes what their behavior is often considered- stupid. The story begins with Stanley Stupid, the patriarch, thinking that the "sender" from the stamp "return to sender" on letters is a wicked man who plans a conspiracy. Adding several mix-ups and misunderstandings, the family unintentionally and unwittingly save the world from military chaos, while still believing a fake story about a fictional man called Sender and his plot to confiscate everyone's mail and trash.
Plot
Stanley Stupid (Tom Arnold) is convinced that someone is stealing his trash, given that every few days it disappears. After several attempts, he discovers and follows a garbage truck to the local dump on rollerblades (he figures because it has more wheels than a car or a bike it is faster). His children, Buster (Bug Hall) and Petunia (Alex McKenna), upon waking up and not finding their father, decide to go to the police for help, only after leaving a note for their mother saying where they're going. However, they only write down the words "Police Kidnapped Your Children" Later, Stanley's wife and the children's mother, Joan (Jessica Lundy), wake up to find the note followed by a phone call from the police saying, "We have your children" causing Joan to set out to find and rescue her children.
Stanley at the dump, meanwhile, has been overhearing a meeting of corrupt army officials promising several foreign representatives large amounts of contraband. Stanley poses as one of the foreigners, and has a short talk with Colonel Neidermeyer (Mark Metcalf), the leader of the corrupt officers. Neidermeyer is convinced that Stanley is a secret agent, so he cautiously gives Stanley his car and cell phone and sends him off on good terms. Shortly afterwards, he tells Lieutenant Neal (Matt Keeslar), one of his subordinate assassins, to kill him.
Meanwhile, the children are brought home by the police only to discover that their mother is gone too. After the two find an advertisement for a Chinese restaurant, they assume it must be a clue, and go to the restaurant. There, Buster receives a fortune cookie with the fortune being: "Time flies when you're having fun." The kids believe this is? the Daily Times Newspaper and go there to be reunited with Joan. The children go into the offices of a newspaper, where they ultimately end up in front of a computer. The computer prompts them for a headline, and after telling Buster (who is picking his nose) and Joan that computer language is alien, Petunia inputs "alien picks nose". The computer then requests a picture, at which they try to slide a photograph of Stanley into the floppy drive. The computer reports a fatal error in Drive B.
Stanley, after already surviving two assassination attempts, calls his wife on his new cell phone while driving, and she cautions him to "beware of the Drive B. ... Whatever error you make with it could be fatal." Neal, at that moment, has placed a bomb on the car at the same time that a bee enters Stanley's car, and while trying to shoo it so that he can drive, realizes he's said the words "drive" and "bee" in the same sentence, and jumps out of the car, swating the bee with his shoe at the moment the car explodes. Stanley later has to take a taxi home, but ultimately ends up at his neighbor's house. Stanley for a moment believes his old neighbor to be Buster all grown up.
The family finally reunites at their house. Stanley explains a conspiracy he discovered at the dumpster: Years ago, when he worked for the post office, he noticed an inordinate amount of letters were marked "return to sender". Thinking "sender" was a person's name, he reported this to his superior, who promptly fired him. He believes Mr. Sender (played by Christopher Lee in his fantasy) has accumulated many letters since then, has bribed the police into stealing people's children, and is now planning to steal "American's least guarded good" (their garbage). The children suggest looking for "Sender" in the telephone directory, and find a Charles Sender who works at the Museum of Natural History. At the museum, they split up and sneak in.
Buster and Joan find a display of several dates and events, ending at an elevator which had buttons for floors A-D and 1-9. Believing it to be a time machine, Buster presses several random numbers, and the letters B and C. The elevator takes them to a display about dinosaurs, and Buster writes his name on the wall believing it will be the first thing humans will read. Petunia and Stanley, meanwhile, enter Sender's office and find a photograph of him and his daily planner. On their way out, they enter a planetarium. Suddenly, the planetarium show begins, making Stanley and Petunia believe they just died. They are discovered by a janitor named Lloyd (Frankie Faison), who they take as "The Lord" because he appears to be floating among the stars. After a talk, the janitor says he will let them out, and asks them to "throw your gum in the trash after you get done chewing it. I spend a huge amount of my time cleaning up gum."
The family reunites again outside the museum. Stanley and Petunia tell Joan and Buster that Sender was going to a television studio. After confusing Stanley with a talk show guest and Joan with a parcel delivery person, the studio kicks them out, and on the way they see Sender, but are unable to reach him. Upon seeing Stanley on television singing the song I'm My Own Grandpa, Neidermeyer learns that Stanley had evaded his assassin, and so has Stanley kidnapped and brought to the army base. His family follows, but find they're not allowed in. Stanley is tied to a chair and interrogated, but refuses to give away anything. Just when he is about to be beaten, one of his guards spits a wad of chewing gum on the floor. Remembering the museum janitor's words gives him the strength to escape and rejoin his family, who are still arguing on how to get into the base.
Stanley tells them he overheard that something would be happening at "a place called Warehouse 21". Arriving in the middle of the night, they sneak in to discover huge stores of weapons. They ask the corrupt officials to surrender, and soon find themselves under attack. After a series of humorous struggles (such as Petunia taking the safety pin out of a grenade to use the pin as a finger ring) they manage to make enough noise to get the police's attention. All the corrupt officers, except for Neidermeyer, are promptly arrested, and Joan rejoices at seeing the police are on their side again. Stanley approaches Sender, who happened to have stopped at the barricade the police set up, to tell him he needs to give his life a complete turn away from evil. Thinking these are road directions, Sender thanks him. The next morning, when they arrive home, they find Neidermeyer with a gun waiting to kill them. Before he can pull the trigger, he tells them that no guardian angel can save them, at which point the takeout delivery man Joan called earlier barges in, hitting Neidermeyer with the door. The family believes that delivery man to be working for "The Lloyd", when in fact the man's boss' name is Floyd.
Meanwhile, an alien in a faraway space ship was picking his nose as he was passed an edition of the same newspaper Joan and the children were in earlier. Upon seeing "Alien picks nose" and Stanley's photo on the front cover, they set off to Earth to kill him. The film ends as Stanley is grilling hamburgers outside. Buster says he wants to try, at which point the aliens appear in the yard. Oblivious to the aliens, Stanley tries to explain to Buster that he is too little to do it. In the process, he inadvertently sets the aliens on fire, and they teleport away.
Running gags
One running gag is where Stanley Stupid and his daughter enter a planetarium and believe they are dead. The janitor talks to them and they believe he is God. They call him Lord, and he corrects them saying his name is Lloyd, so they call God "Lloyd" from then on. The gag is further extended when they are "rescued" by a takeout delivery man who works for the restaurant "Floyd". They believe him to be a guardian angel and assure him that he works for Lloyd, not Floyd. It even appears in the closing credits, when a final title says "Trust In The Lloyd".
The Stupids' dog and cat are anthropomorphized- claymation characters that act much more intelligently than their owners. For instance, they solved the "mystery" of why the car wouldn't start. Far from needing the mouth to mouth resuscitation Stanley provided, the problem was that the car keys weren't in the ignition.
Another gag is the name of the films main antagonist, Colonel Niedermeyer. The Colonel is played by Mark Metcalf who had previously played Doug Niedermeyer in Animal House. He may be playing the same character, even though the character in Animal House was killed by his own men in Vietnam.http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0582420/
Reception
The film was not well received, grossing just $2,415,593 in the U.S. Tom Arnold won the 1996 Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor for his performances in Big Bully, Carpool and The Stupids. The Stupids was nominated for the Award for Worst Picture.
See also
- List of US box office bombs
External links
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Films directed by John Landis |
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