Stuart Saves His Family (1995)

One of the flop Saturday Night Live movies based on one-note characters stretched out to feature length.

When it was trying to be serious about psychological health, it was relatively all right, but every bit of “comedy” fell so absolutely flat. Al Franken must have wanted to say something genuinely helpful but was limited by the shape of the opportunity at hand. Both needing to be a comedy in general and needing to keep his character as somewhat ridiculous.

Stuart had a family of stereotypical screw-ups. His brother’s role was too broad where he had to be both a beer-drinking football-fan kind of idiot at times and insightful at other times.

Stuart was obviously gay, but they couldn’t really touch the issue in 1995, so he had this female friend who was unrealistically around at all times when you need another person to observe or smile at whatever is happening. Although it mentioned that she was his sponsor in some self-help group, and maybe being a sponsor requires being around all the time.

I made it through an hour before starting to fast forward.