Stay Tuned (film)
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| Stay Tuned | |
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| Directed by | Peter Hyams |
| Produced by | James G. Robinson |
| Written by | Tom. S. Parker, Jim Jennewain and Richard Siegel (story) Tom S. Parker and Jim Jennewain (screenplay) |
| Starring | John Ritter Pam Dawber Jeffrey Jones Eugene Levy |
| Music by | Bruce Broughton |
| Cinematography | Peter Hyams |
| Editing by | Peter E. Berger |
| Studio | Morgan Creek Productions |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
| Release date(s) | August 14, 1992 |
| Running time | 88 min. |
| Country |  United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $10,736,401[1] |
Stay Tuned is an American adventure comedy horror fantasy film directed by Peter Hyams. It starred John Ritter, Pam Dawber, Jeffrey Jones, and Eugene Levy. The official Stay Tuned soundtrack was released on August 29, 1992.
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[edit] Plot
The film's primary protagonists are Roy Knable (John Ritter), a couch potato, struggling Seattle plumbing salesman and former fencing athlete, and his neglected wife Helen (Pam Dawber), a senior vitamin product manager. After a fight (which involved Helen smashing the family television screen with one of Roy's fencing trophies as a wake-up call to reality), Mr. Spike (Jeffrey Jones) appears at the couples' door, offering him a new high tech satellite dish system filled with 666 channels of programs one cannot view on the four big networks (CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox). What Roy doesn't know is that Spike (later referred to as "Mephistopheles of the Cathode Ray") is an emissary from Hell who wants to boost the influx of souls by arranging for TV junkies to be killed in the most gruesome and ironic situations imaginable. The 'candidates' are sucked into a hellish television world, called Hell Vision, and put through a gauntlet where they must survive a number of satirical versions of sitcoms and movies. If they can survive for 24 hours they are free to go but if they get killed then their souls will go to Satan.
The dish eventually sucks Roy and Helen into this warped world. They are pursued by Spike, who enters some shows along with the Knables in order to halt their advance. Roy and Spike continue to fight throughout several shows, even in a cloak-and-dagger scenario where Roy displays his long-buried talent as a fencer. Through tenacity and sheer luck, the Knables keep surviving, and their young son Darryl, who sees and recognizes his parents fighting for their lives on the TV set, and his older sister Diane are able to provide important assistance from the real world. This infuriates Spike to the point that he makes good on Roy's contract, releasing him but not Helen as she was not in the system under contract.
Roy re-enters the system to save Helen, bringing his own remote control with him, allowing them to control their journey. Roy confronts Spike in a music video, manages to get a hold of Spike's remote and uses it to save Helen from being run over by a train in a western movie, evicting them both from the TV set, which destroys itself right afterwards. In the end Spike gets eliminated in part by a vengeful employee he banished to the system earlier and is succeeded in his executive position by a younger upstart employee. Roy, who has learned a valuable lesson after his adventure, has dramatically cut back on his TV viewing and taken a new job as a fencing teacher.
[edit] Reception
The film was not screened for film critics.[2] 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."[2]
Time Out called it "pointless 'satire'" with the "emotional depth of a 30-second soap commercial."[5]
[edit] Parodies
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Some film and TV show parodies include:
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[edit] References
- ^ Stay Tuned at Box Office Mojo
- ^ a b c d e Review of Stay Tuned from Variety
- ^ 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 Review of Stay Tuned, an August 18, 1992 review from the Washington Post
- ^ Review of Stay Tuned from the Time Out Film Guide
[edit] External links
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Stay Tuned (film) |
- Stay Tuned at the Internet Movie Database
- Stay Tuned at AllRovi
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