Stuart Saves His Family

1995

Comedy / Drama

5
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 30% · 27 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 53% · 2.5K ratings
IMDb Rating 5.3/10 10 3070 3.1K

dysfunctional family public access

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Plot summary

A self-help advocate struggles to put his dysfunctional family in its place.

Director

Harold Ramis Photo
Harold Ramis

Top cast

Vincent D'Onofrio Photo
Vincent D'Onofrio as Donnie
Walter Olkewicz Photo
Walter Olkewicz as Larry Skoag
Laura San Giacomo Photo
Laura San Giacomo as Julia
Lesley Boone Photo
Lesley Boone as Jodie
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
896.21 MB
1280*694
English 2.0
NR
us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 37 min
Seeds ...
1.8 GB
1920*1040
English 5.1
NR
us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 37 min
Seeds 3

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by fatcat-73450 6 / 10

The Loneliest Movie

This movie has always felt like a very lonely movie to me.Stuart Smalley (the main character) is constantly surrounded by people, yet he seems to have no really deep and meaningful relationships. His family doesn't like or understand him, it seems nothing is really going to happen with his best (female) friend Julia (they share a lip peck at the end but it's extremely ambiguous and tame), and his most passionate relationships seems to be with his ex-boss, with whom he shares a mutual hatred.Stuart is no less quirky and comical than any of your standard SNL characters. He's an effeminate devotee of the 12-step-programs and new-age feel good popular psychology. He runs a cable access show and he fails at everything. He has no deep relationships, he has no money, his TV show, which seems to be the center of his world a la Wayne's World (1992), seems to have very mixed reviews... Most importantly, the self-help programs he uses to structure his life clearly don't work well - he's even more dramatic than the average person, going into spirals of self-loathing and self-pity frequently and apparently requiring constant interventions to get him through his low points.It seems like a subtle critique of the whole industry which probably doesn't work so much in and of itself, but rather on the mechanisms of placebo effect and improved affect through social interaction.I personally like this movie, but it's no heavy hitter. The stakes are, as the movie poster suggests (he's ironically holding up a sphere like Atlas, suggesting he's going to try to save the world), pathetically low and narrow. The movie involves him trying to solve certain petty family squabbles and failing at it.It's also clearly meant to be a comedy with absurd situations, but it's not funny. It rarely gets a laugh from raw humour and it's not at all absurd enough to be funny in that regard; the only humour you could expect from it is a very low-key ironic sort of humour. He's delusional, he's a drama queen obsessed with self-help, he's too rigid to do something good for his family if it means going against his impractical values.The final message is strong and consistent throughout the film - you need to focus on yourself because you can't really change others. I appreciate the effort and the movie effectively (if lightly) holds your attention for its run, but that's not enough to save this film. It was a box office bomb and deserved to be. It's niche.Honourable Mentions: A Night at the Roxbury (1998). Another movie involving SNL alumni. It's equally bleak in a sense. Even though the main characters get all of the (petty) things they want at the center of the plot, by the end you get this impression that nothing's going to be OK with them. They have some serious personality flaws that are going to keep making their lives an eternal series of unimpressive hills and very low valleys.
Reviewed by Derek237 6 / 10

No belly laughs, but good.

A not-so-well-remembered SNL movie based on a not-so-well-remembered SNL sketch. I watched it last night, and I don't think I've ever seen it before so it was kind of surprising at how unfunny it was. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it just felt more like an offbeat drama than a comedy. It dealt with real issues and didn't have pristine solutions and I've left it feeling contemplative and, to be honest, a little sad, which is sort of a compliment and sort of isn't. But the acting in the movie is great. I have this idea in my head of Al Franken as this gruff, intense comedic force but here he's so soft-spoken and calm so you gotta hand it to him, the guy is COMMITTED. Laura San Giacomo is also excellent and has a heartbreaking little speech. And Vincent D'Onofrio as the pothead slacker brother is good stuff. I don't know. Not sure how I altogether feel about it. I'd probably give it a 6/10, not great but by no means bad. I think it's on Netflix. Check it out.

Reviewed by lee_eisenberg 5 / 10

not quite good enough or smart enough, but kind of likable

"Stuart Saves His Family" came out before I had heard of Al Franken, so I took no notice. After I read Franken's book "Rush Limbaugh is a Big, Fat Idiot and Other Observations", I decided to check it out. It turns out that there's not really very much here. Franken plays Stuart Smalley, a character from "Saturday Night Live", and the movie portrays him having a crazy family. Why do movies and TV shows always seem to portray families as nearly mental? I actually giggled when he resorts to name-calling ("You are a big...!), but it seemed like the movie didn't have much of a point beyond that. Then again, few "SNL" skits make good movies. Of course, I might just be too tough on Al Franken; having read his political satires, I expect the highest quality from him.

So I don't recommend it. I do think that Al Franken would make a really good senator (in case you haven't heard, he's running for senate in Minnesota), but for entertainment, he should stick to mocking the Bush administration and right-wing commentators.

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