STAY TUNED MOVIE
STAY TUNED TV

That’s because Spike is a demon whose sinister machinations result in Roy and Helen being sucked into an underworld realm called Hell Vision, where the familiar television fodder of yesteryear is twisted in ways that are supposed to be comical and macabre but are instead punishing and brutally unfunny.Įarly in their misadventures, Roy and Helen find themselves in a parody of a sadistic game show called You Can’t Win.

STAY TUNED TV

Spike offers the gullible TV lover an offer that was irresistible in 1992 but would be perversely unappealing today: a 44-inch television screen (44 inches!) complete with a nifty satellite dish and 666 channels. Roy also deeply resents and envies his more successful wife Helen (fellow television veteran Pam Dawber of Mork & Mindy and My Sister Sam), who isn’t exactly overjoyed with the loser she’s married to, either. And that’s even before Roy gets involved with some sinister Satanic juju courtesy of a malevolent figure known as Mr. Stay Tuned digs itself into a hole so deep it can never recover by making Roy Knable not just a loser with a dead end job, but also a self-absorbed schmuck who ignores his wife and children so he can mindlessly consume reruns and baseball games. The metaphysical redemption comedy subgenre calls for a protagonist to begin their spiritual journey from a place of selfishness and immaturity so they have plenty of room for spiritual growth.

STAY TUNED MOVIE

Unfortunately, there’s nothing Ritter can do to redeem Stay Tuned, and any movie incapable of getting audiences to like and identify with a character played by an icon as innately lovable as he is has a problem.

It’s 88 minutes of squandered potential and good ideas dying agonizing deaths. Late in the film, there’s a typically clumsy nod to his star-making turn on the ABC sitcom: as the Three’s Company theme song kicks in, Ritter lets out a howl of existential despair that would be an appropriate response to both the indignities Roy Knable faces and the parallel humiliations of the actor playing him. He was one of the uncontested geniuses of television comedy, an achievement made more remarkable when you consider he developed his richly merited reputation as a peerless physical comedian on Three’s Company, a show just as rightfully reviled for representing a sad nadir in sleazy, exploitative T&A and moronic formula. Fox he came close to being the medium’s living embodiment. Ritter was more than just just an unusually beloved TV actor like Ted Danson or Michael J. The good ideas begin with the casting of the dearly missed John Ritter as Roy Knable, a struggling plumbing equipment salesman whose defining characteristic is his unhealthy addiction to television. Instead, it’s 88 minutes of squandered potential and good ideas dying agonizing deaths, with the notable exception of an animated sequence from the great Chuck Jones that manages to squeeze a little heart and old-fashioned artistry into what is otherwise a creative black hole. Yet despite such juicy subject matter, Stay Tuned somehow manages not to say anything about television, pop-culture, or desperation. The reason for its small screen appeal is that it’s a movie about television - and our insatiable addiction to it. It was a film that was practically custom-designed for home video rather than the multiplex. Then again, Stay Tuned’s popularity at the video store made sense. I worked as a video store clerk at Blockbuster as a teenager, and I have a weirdly vivid memory of the 1992 dark comedy Stay Tuned. Despite its sizable critical and commercial failure during its theatrical run, it was always checked out and the subject of intense interest.

Stay tuned