Stay Tuned (1992)

i must have seen a different film!!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

As Good As It Gets

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

the movie is supposed to be set in the US, BUT in the scene where John Ritter is on the highway and he drops a suitcase, in the background you can see HarborPlace in Vancouver BC. PLUS the fencing studio at the end of the movie is GasTown in Vancouver. The part where the train is going to hit Pam Dawber (Helen Knable) was filmed at Old Tucson Movie Studios (before it burned down) Some US movies say that they are in Portland, Seattle, NYC but it is really Vancouver. Check out Rumble in the Bronx with Jackie Chan. The mountains in the background are Whistler,BC and the 3 Lions (site for the 2010 Winter Olympics) The first couple of years of XFiles were filmed in Vancouver, as was 21 JumpStreet.

I haven't seen the movie in years but do remember liking it. Both Ritter,Dawber and Jones are perfectly cast in this comedy. A married couple,one of which is totally obsessed with TV like many of us all..kidding...anyway both husband and wife are sucked into the TV through the Satel light dish and thus the real fun begins.I won't spoil the movie for anyone but there's a very amusing sequence where both are animated mice. If you happen to see it in the video store rent it. Even though it didn't fair well at Box Office it still is a pretty good flick. One of Ritter's best movies in my opinion. I bought it at a yard sale shortly after Ritter died in memory as well as I knew it was a good movie having first seen after it was first released on VHS. Everyone in the movie was awesome. Sure there's spots where it could of been better but for the most was pretty good flick.

My friend Kenn Harris recommended this movie to me and I was against it from the start weeks ago because it always looked stupid to me and I hate John Ritter with a passion. But I called him and apologized for doubting him - this film is a hidden treasure.While it is true that John Ritter is a one-dimensional actor, this film does not rely heavily on his acting or even his speaking. The bulk of this film is visual gags and pop culture references. If you grew up watching TV, you should catch most of these and they're hilarious. "Different Strokes" was great, and so was "Fresh Prince of Darkness"... and who can forget "Frankensteinfeld"? If that's not enough, two great actors round out the cast - Jeffrey Jones and Eugene Levy. Jones is often a minor actor, but he is given top spot in this film, and rightfully so. As we later saw in "Ravenous", this man has a full potential for evil and his screen presence is terrific. Levy is classic, his character is the real hero of this film. Best of all, this is a younger Levy, years before he became known as the father from "American Pie"... this is pure Levy, untainted. This film highly recommended.

Roy Knable (John Ritter) loves watching television so much that his marriage is falling apart because of it. When a door-to-door salesman shows him a high-tech remote control, Ritter listens to his pitch, and buys into it when he discovers that it's for a new television and satellite system that offers 666 channels of programming--much of which is not available anywhere else. However, the salesman may not have been what he seemed to be, and Knable soon discovers that he may have agreed to a contract that obligated him to give up more than money.Oh, how I loved this film! Director Peter Hyams and the writing crew of Tom S. Parker, Jim Jennewein and Richard Siegel definitely had my number on this one. Stay Tuned is a very clever horror comedy that is extremely underrated and perhaps was a bit mismarketed. Although I'm a huge horror fan, and love horror comedies, I'd never heard of this one before (however, later I did find references to it in a couple horror sources, so it seems it wasn't completely overlooked by the industry and fans). But the horror aspect of the film doesn't appear to be advertised anywhere. I watched this on HBO's Family Channel. Even though Knable's son is important to the plot and there are strong fantasy aspects, this is not really a family film. Not that kids might not like the film, but they'd have to be kids who like horror (comedies) and whose parents let them watch horror (comedies). Enjoyment of the film is also helped by having a familiarity with the material that is being spoofed, and the references are broad enough that it would take years of experience to acquire that familiarity.Why spoofed? Well, on one level, Stay Tuned is just a long series of crafty takes on film and television programs and genres, giving many well-known classics a more immediate horror twist--immediate because they all put our heroes, Knable and his wife Helen (Pam Dawber), in peril in some way. There are many more subtle jokes, as well, and the film even pokes fun at film students/film geeks. The spoofs range from silly to poignant, and can be as quick as a title or as long as ten minutes or so. One of the best is a classic Warner Brothers-styled animated segment. The style and the quality should not be surprising, as Chuck Jones designed and supervised the animation.Under different hands, maybe this material wouldn't be quite as good as it is. Hyams' direction is spot-on throughout the film, the script (including the dialogue) is very intelligent, and in addition to Ritter and Dawber being as good as I've seen them, Stay Tuned also features Jeffrey Jones (one of my favorite character actors) and Eugene Levy. Both are fantastic.Stay Tuned deserves much wider recognition. It is funny, suspenseful and seems to draw from a well of endless inventiveness. It's as good as any other horror comedy I've seen. There is also a surface message of turning off the television and living your life, which is a worthwhile sentiment, but perhaps a harder sell when it is packaged in a film as excellent as this.A 10 out of 10 from me.