TEFB RANDOM REVIEW: Stay Tuned

Hey guys,

So I finally decided to write up a review, but before you get all excited there is something you should know. I'm a homebody. My wife and I get to the theatre maybe twice a year. So what the hell am I reviewing then?

What ever is in my Netflix queue!

So my first review is the 1992 Comedy: Stay Tuned.

Roy and Helen Knable (John Ritter and Pam Dawbner) have a marriage that's on the skids. Not helping is Roy's absolute addiction to television. An addiction that is about to get him and his wife into big trouble.

Enter "Spike" (Jeffrey Jones). Spike is #2 to the devil himself. He runs Hell Vision a cable network dedicated to entertaining Lucifer and collecting souls. How does he do this? By downloading unsuspecting couch potatoes directly into the Hell Vision programming lineup!

The rest of the movie follows Roy and Hellen as they surf from channel to channel trying to avoid death at every turn of the dial.

From the cheesy font used for the opening credits to the campy special effects this movie screams late 80's/early 90's. John, Pam, and Jeff put in a solid performance. The supporting cast varies from passible (the kids, the intern). To very respectible (Bob Dishy as Murray Seidenbaum for example).

The Hell Vision lineup is certainly not as over the top as it could have been. But knock offs of a lot of the early 90's staples made it in including Dwaynes Underworld, Driving Over Miss Daisy, and a music video with Salt-N-Pepa. The absolute highlight of this film for me has got to be the spectacular animated cat and mouse sequence supervised by the one and only Chuck Jones.

For folks that have been watching TV since the early 90's the comedy lands pretty consistently with the parody references to shows and movies. Folks 20 and younger probably wouldn't get a majority of the gags without doing some IMDB homework.

The audio track is Dolby Digital 5.1 which really means early 90's stereo. The special effects are decent for the time and hold up reasonably well in the present.

As far as special features go, the disk is rather sparse. There is a cast list (literally it's just a screen shot from the film with the major cast members names), and a featurette creatively labeled "featurette". To be honest the featurette looks like it was slapped together using clips they found on the floor with with small slivers of cast interviews mixed in.

Bottom line, is if you like movies like Short Circuit and Weekend at Bernies you'll be able to appreciate this one.

It certainly deserves higher than the 5.4 (out of 10) it currently has on IMDB.

I rate it a 7.

Check it out!