Stuart Saves His Family (1995)

Touches You

Sadly Over-hyped

Expected more

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

I think that the problem with this movie is that it has difficulty handling it's tragicomic aspect. That is so hard to pull off. In my mind, the perfect example of a movie that DOES would be Steve Martin's "Roxanne". Most tragicomic movies either err on being too dramatic or too comic. This one just leaned too far in the dramatic department. While it did really flesh out the smalley characters, it did so at the expense of being funny. It needed a little more crazy/absurd moments to be a truly good comedy. I should mention that at essentially every "skit" character based movie from SNL has fallen flat, so there is not exactly much to match or beat here. Regardless of that low-bar, I truly think this could have been a riot if made differently.I had in mind something like "Stuart saves the world', like an Austin Powers flick(how ironic, BTW, that the most successful SNL alumni movies are NOT based on SNL characters, ala Bill Murray's Stripes, Groundhog Day, et al., or Chevy Chases Vacation flicks, The "Blues Brothers" being the one exception here)....Again, it would have been perfect if he saved the world through his insipid motivational drivel, seeing as how some of the actual gurus, especially the religious ones disguised as preachers, such as Joel Osteen, come close to at least "attempting" to do that right now. Actually, Joel Osteen is not at all dissimilar to Stuart Smiley. Scary but true. It could have been classic, but this little movie is still sweet, and far better then the manure 99% of the character skit SNL movies are. And now Franken has the last laugh, being one of only two US Senators that were former movie stars. Reagan will prob forever hold the record of being the only president of that ilk.

I am a fan of Al Frankin and had wanted to see this movie for quite a while. As it turns out, that was 12 years, but I finally saw Stuart Saves His Family on HBO. The short answer is that I liked it a lot, but not for the reasons that I was expecting to like it for. The movie was funny, but not really laugh out loud funny. The characters were too well developed for "laugh out loud". It would have felt mean to laugh at the alcoholic father who has no clue that he has a problem. The stoner brother who eventually figures out he's wasted his life. The enabler mother. The obese sister who deals with her stress by eating pound cake. I found myself rooting for these people, and not really wanting to laugh at them. There are certainly funny parts of the movie, and Al Frankin is a funny guy, but I think that the problem with Stuart Saves His Family is that it is too well done for an audience who want Wayne's World (One of my favorites, BTW) and instead got a serious movie about dysfunctional people with very real problems where you laugh with them and not at them.

I don't know how funny this movie is to people who aren't involved in 12-step programs or don't know anyone who is. But to this 12-stepper, the movie is hilarious. Al Franken and crew seem to walk the narrow line between poking fun at the 12-step movement while also appreciating its good points. Lots of in-jokes here, and some very funny ones. I bought the home video version and have watched it several times. Al Franken, Laura San Giacomo, Shirley Knight, Julia Sweeney are all very good.

This is probably the best of the SNL films simply because there is a back story behind the film. (Unlike the terrible "It's Pat!")Those who watched SNL while Al Franken was on it saw the Smalley character. (His adage: I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and gosh darn it people like me!) In these skits, Smalley (who obviously had had a very difficult life) described his family. (On Halloween "I thought of going as a feeling but what does dread look like really? Other than my mother.") The skits would give the viewer images and makes us wonder how bad this family actually was. Now we know.So many SNL films fail because they stretch a 2 minute skit into ninety minutes. One reviewer called it "Trying to stretch a piece of chewing gum across I-25, sometimes it makes it, most times it doesn't." This movie had great fully developed characters. There was no reason to stretch anything.Al Franken plays the character with such sensitivity and such love and such heart that you can't help feeling for the poor guy. You can tell that this character is a sweet, kind human being who simply never got a decent start in life and is trying to do things right.The scenes going back to Smalley's childhood complete the story. Including the funny scene about the family's trip to California.To those who that this movie is as bad as "It's Pat" I beg to differ."It's Pat" never worked because it was never meant to work.My only regret is that it failed so miserably box office wise and we'll never see a sequel. Al Franken is also no longer on SNL. I miss Stuart.This movie gets an 8 out of 10. It's a great movie. A great movie to watch when you feel sorry for yourself or having a bad day.