STAY TUNED
US, 1992, 87 minutes, Colour.
John Ritter, Pam Dawber, Jeffrey Jones, Eugene Levy.
Directed by Peter Hyams.
Stay Tuned is a brief cinema satire on television. It was photographed and directed by Peter Hyams, director of a wide range of films including Capricorn One and 2010.
The film satirises couch potatoes, their fixation on television, the disruption of their families. By using a Faust story, it gives the opportunity for devilish Jeffrey Jones to sign a contract with John Ritter and take him and his wife into television Hell where they participate in a range of programs from quizzes, animation, gangster films, the French Revolution and westerns.
The film is mildly amusing - a smile rather than a laugh film. The situations are fairly obvious, but there is some amusement in the satirical touches about the variety of programs, especially in the altered names for sadistic programs on the Hellish channels as well as the final credits and some jokes about the television programs of the period.
1. The movie satirising television? A pleasant and genial satire rather than corrosive?
2. The picture of the suburbs, the family home, the role of television - the smashing of sets, the bigger sets, the dishes for better reception? The title?
3. The introduction, the neighbours, the wife and her demands on her husband, the Devil arriving, making the contract and disappearing into TV Hell? The wife crushed by the Godzilla creature during their travels? The husband getting killed in the gangster film?
4. The narration by the son, his perceptions of his family? The ordinary dealings of the family, scenes at home? Roy and his seeming failure at his salesman job, trudging up the stairs, going to the wrong floor? Helen and her success in business? The potential rivalry and comparisons? The young sister and her teenage troubles, her friends?
5. Roy and his being a couch potato, stuck on TV, rapier-fighting with Errol Flynn, trying to watch the game while seriously talking to his wife? Her angers and wanting to leave?
6. The kids, the son and his using TV for bribing his sister about the video? The clash with next-door's dog? The parents going, the girls coming to the party? The son and his concern for his parents, the brother and sister trying to rescue the parents?
7. Stick, devilish, arrival at the door, his deals, getting Roy to sell his soul? The central controls in Hell, the computers, the display board with the scores? The talk about the Devil?
8. Stick taking Roy and Helen into Hell: their appearing on the quiz, Helen getting the right answer? Going on the travel show, being pursued by the wolves? Their ingenuity? Meeting the assistant doing field research and his being maimed by the wolves? Finding themselves in the animation story, the cat and mouse, the robot cat, the robot dog? The parody of the gangster film and the previous sequence from The Maltese Falcon? The French Revolution and Roy in disguise, about to be executed - and his son getting his voice into the program and saving his father? The western with Helen tied to the dynamite and the approaching train? Roy and his going back for Helen? In Star Trek, in the MTV song, the rapier duel with Stick? The parody of advertisement and the sadistic twist to ordinary shows?
9. Roy and Helen and their adventures, sharing the dangers, coming closer together?
10. Eugene Levy as the assistant, his ambitions, being sent on field work, losing his limbs?
11. Stick, the young graduate from the film school as a rival?
12. The happy ending - and the relegating of television to its rightful and minor place? The humour of the jokey final credits and the parody of titles of television programs?
