Stuart Saves His Family (1995)

i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

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.

This is one of best comedies of all times. The psychology of the main character is very incisive and realistic. However it is put in a grotesque context. Other characters are also very true to life or rather caricatures of certain types of people. The brother and the father of the main character seem to bring up the politically correct goofiness and dorkines of Al Franken. The Mother cuts also a very real and yet exaggerated person. The plot flows well and the whole dysfunctional family is funny and sad at the same time. The friends of Al Franken are also funny in their pseudo psychological babble and pretense. I find this film to be so good that I have bought the DVD.

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 was channel-surfing one afternoon and "Stuart Saves His Family" was on HBO. Being a bit of a masochist, I thought I'd stay and see how embarrassingly bad it was going to be (as most SNL-character-inspired movies are) and was pleasantly surprised. Anyone who is or knows someone who is in any of the 12-step programs will appreciate this movie and show it to all your friends. It has a stellar cast and Al Franken is an underrated genius.