DnaError's Rating: Remember the 90s?
DnaError's Review: Ah Television, the boob tube, the idiot mox, the glowing babysitter, teacher..mother secret lover, a culutral touchstone that turned us from a nation of jitterbugging war heros into fat couch-riders with the attension spans of gnats. Gotta love it. It's also the subject of this bizzare little early 90's comdey "Stay Tuned."

John Ritter playes Roy Knable, a tv-obessed, snack-food shoveling pathetic turd of a man. His wife, Helen , resents his constant touching of the remote control rather than her, and his two kids are bored of his couch-jockying. Soon, like all of us have had happen, a demonic Satllelight TV salesmen sells him a huge new TV dish (boy, the early 90's...remember when dishs where not the size of small pets?) that also sucks him and his wife into a kooky universe of satatic TV parodies.

Okay, enough plot re-hash, Stay Tuned is one werid and funny movie. It grows on you, from the endless parodies of every TV genre under the sun to the occasionally witty one-liners. Sure, some of the jokes are outdated (I:E Parodies such as "Northern Overexposure", "Three Men and Rosemary's baby", Salt and Peppa!) and the movie seems to loose steam in it's final 20 mintues, but it's rapid-fire jokes about everything TV..from bad Japanese Monster movies to Saturday Morning Cartoons, combined with an unusually clever little concept, make Stay Tuned a pleasent rental comdey.

Kyle's Rating: stay tuned . . . for Satan!
Kyle's Review: DnaError’s review is good, but if you’re on the fence about checking out Stay Tuned I must speak directly to you: see this movie! It’s wacky wild fun! Everyone at least once in their life wishes they could enter their particular favorite show and get involved. You can experience that fantasy through this film! Sure, it’s only a notch above a made-exclusively-for-cable movie, but that tiny notch represents a higher budget well spent on amusing TV parodies, clever wit, and engaging performances from John Ritter and Jeffrey Jones. It’s all worth it. I’d also like to mention that if you ever get sucked into the television realm to do battle with Satan and his minions, use the old “hey your shoelace is untied”/kick-in-the-nuts-when-Satan-is-distracted gag. Take that, Lord o’ Darkness! Haw haw!

Justin's Rating: Channel 666... get it? That's a satanic number AND a cable channel! heh... heh.
Justin's Review: Sometimes I think that there's been a massive effort to make a "Subtext for Idiots" movie series and we just never see the label when we rent. I'm not an overly dumb guy. Sure, one morning while making coffee the pot ended up exploding and I ran in small circles shrieking like a little girl, but I'm not overly dumb. So say, for instance, you're a filmmaker and you want to make a parody of something. I am intelligent enough to get a sly reference if you slip it in under the radar (and it's more delightful if I catch it only the second or third time around). But when you assume that I can't understand anything unless it is literally spelled out for me "T-H-I-S I-S A P-A-R-O-D-Y", then I get a little miffed and plop my imaginary child down in front of the TV and go get a soda or something.

Stay Tuned is not a subtle parody of TV shows. One of the nice things I can say about it is that at least it isn't gross. But... it might have been better if it had been. You see, a quarrelling couple (having the Most Fake Divorce Argument Ever, about the husband's hypnotic obsession with TV watching) ends up inside a series of cable TV shows... from HELL! Ahhh! No, wait, let me try that again... from HELL! Yawn. Yes, when you're sucked into a satanic TV satellite dish system, you'd expect things to get pretty gory and freaky, fast. But not here, because I'd almost recommend Stay Tuned to five year old church-goers, it's that tame. It's like the least most scary version of hell, ever.

For instance, the couple get sent to a Wayne's World parody, Dwayne's Underwold. Wow! It's a complete knockoff, with zombies and not too much more! I'm so frightened, the seat of my pants are now a chocolate brown! So pretty much we have to accept that they're going for a mildly twisted parody, which is largely miss and hit and miss. Jeffrey Jones, that bad principal from Ferris Bueller, is the lead devil-guy with a high tech command room. Our heroes are whiny and boring and need about three more quirks to make us care for them at all.

Essentially, Stay Tuned is not as visionary about its underworld theme as, say, Beetlejuice. Nor is it clever enough with the parodies as, say, UHF. So many time's they're spelling out the joke for you that you feel compelled to scream back, "OKAY! I get it already! That's a show I know, only with some sort of hellish twist to it!" The really sad thing is that since Stay Tuned is an early 90s endevour, most of the shows they parody have already been taken off the air and been put to sleep (probably my favorite mention of an early 90s show was "The Fresh Prince of Darkness"). It's not horrible, but it's far from good, and I'll stick to that. In HELL!

Didja Notice?
The *excellent* Cartoon sequence. Seriously, it was so Chuck-Jonesian..from the asides to the wacky animation... I can't believe cartoons like that aren't made any more.
Dwayne's Underworld? Man, talk about a right-on parody! I thought it was actually Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey.
Jonah F writes in: "You forgot the John Ritter/Three's Company joke, when John Ritter finds himself in the Santa Monica apartment - a blond and a brunette appear at the door, and demand of him, "Where have you BEEN?!" Ritter, understandably, screams."

The Movie Store!
Stay Tuned: Movie [VHS]
Stay Tuned: Movie [DVD]
Stay Tuned: Soundtrack [CD]

Intermission!
During the end credits, the HVTV Fall Lineup is shown, including:

• I Love Lucifer
• The Golden Ghouls
• Murder She Likes
• David Dukes of Hazard
• Facts of Life Support
• Beverly Hills, 90666
• Fresh Prince of Darkness
• Unmarried with Children

Groovy Quotes

[As cartoon mice.]
Roy: Boy, this is strange!
Helen: Strange? I'm a cartoon mouse with high-heel sneakers. The word "strange" is somewhat lacking.

If you liked this movie, try these:
UHF
Beetlejuice