August 30, 1996

As I often say, writing about comedies can be hard, because humor is so subjective. I always end up listing parts that I (and not necessarily you) think are funny. And today I’m trying to write about a comedy that was universally shat upon. It was nominated for Razzies for Worst Picture, Worst Director and Worst Picture, and I could not find any positive reviews from the time; I couldn’t even find any that didn’t call it “painfully unfunny” or similar. It was also a flop, making around a 7th of its budget in theaters. I am not aware of it ever being subject to any kind of re-evaluation, and when Nathan Rabin wrote about it in 2011 he classified it as a fiasco. But my objective today is to try to explain why, since 1996 and continuing through 2026 and the foreseeable future, I have found THE STUPIDS, directed by John Landis (in his follow up to BEVERLY HILLS COP III), to be extremely laugh out loud funny. I sincerely can’t fathom why a normal, joyful person would have a reason to look down on it, and not find it at least a little amusing. But they don’t. And I have to try to convince them to change their ways. Wish me luck!

Here’s what I remember from seeing it on or around opening day, 1996: I was there with two friends with similar senses of humor. You know, we were obsessed with The Simpsons, particularly the monorail episode; we watched Late Night with Conan O’Brien together from the beginning, when the conventional wisdom was that he sucked; we genuinely believed in “the CABIN BOY test” that we could get along with someone if they liked CABIN BOY and otherwise were suspicious of them.

Most people who had failed the CABIN BOY test, or had never heard of CABIN BOY, and also most people in general, did not go see THE STUPIDS. I remember distinctly that there was one other pair of people at the back of the theater, and that’s it. When the movie begins, Stanley Stupid (Tom Arnold, FREDDY’S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE) welcomes a new day with a big smile on his face, until he notices something odd about his garbage cans. He asks his wife Joan (Jessica Lundy, VAMPIRE’S KISS) if she moved them from the curb, and she says she didn’t. Upset, he explains that someone took their garbage again. Just like last week.

I told you I don’t want to just list what’s funny, but that’s funny. I chuckled. Joan says they can borrow some garbage until they get back on their feet, and begs Stanley to not get involved, but he says “I already am involved!” and sets out to bring the garbage thieves to justice. He hides out all night spying on the cans, eventually witnessing the sight of gas-masked men in a large truck shining their headlights through the morning fog, looking as scary and otherworldly as the government scientists in E.T. “What in the world!?” he says. They take his garbage, so he puts on rollerblades and follows them.

Whenever it was that we realized that Stanley believing there’s a conspiracy to steal everyone’s garbage is not just a throwaway joke, but the premise of the movie, that’s when my friends and I really started laughing. The two in the back weren’t laughing. Except… I don’t know, 15 minutes in or so, they started. They had to get accustomed to it, it seemed, or it had to get through their defenses, and then they were with it. The Stupid had to kick in. But it did. It won us all over.

Stanley and Joan have two kids, Buster (Bug Hall, THE LITTLE RASCALS) and Petunia (Alex McKenna, A WOMAN UNDONE). In the morning they notice that their dad never came home, and decide he’s been kidnapped and they have to go to the police. But they do such a poor job of writing a note to Mom that it leads her to believe they’ve been kidnapped by the police.

While Stanley tries to uncover the secret of the missing garbage and the kids try to find their parents and Joan tries to find the kids, and all of them weave increasingly ridiculous explanations for what’s happening, none of them figure out that they’ve run into an actual conspiracy of military assholes Colonel Neidermeyer (Mark Metcalf, THE HEAVENLY KID, Twisted Sister videos, reprising his role from ANIMAL HOUSE?) and Lieutenant Neal (Matt Keeslar, “MP At The Gate,” RENAISSANCE MAN) doing illegal arms deals in the garbage dump. But those guys notice Stanley looking for his garbage and become convinced that he’s a dangerous agent on their trail.

I can imagine that pretty much all of this could just be annoying if executed with the wrong type of broadness, or with try-hard music instead of this slightly Elfman-esque score by Christopher Young (HELLRAISER). But I think tonally Landis gets almost all of it just right. Maybe the occasional supporting player strikes a wrong note, but it’s mostly the Stupids on screen, and they are always right on target. When Petunia checks in the dryer and under the couch cushions while searching the house for her mom, or when Buster says things like “we seem to be caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse,” they always have the exact right mix of sincerity, cluelessness, and innocence. There’s just a cavalcade of ridiculousness going on at all times, and none of them show any signs of recognition.

Let me just mention a few of the absurd things that happen. While spying, Stanley disguises himself as a bush, then gets too deep undercover, notices his hands and feet, and becomes convinced that he is the world’s first half man, half bush. The kids unknowingly start a feud with aliens by accidentally rewriting a headline by guessing passwords for a computer at the newspaper. Buster and Mom mistake a museum elevator for a time machine and some dinosaur skeletons for sleeping dinosaurs that are “absolutely starved.” Petunia and Dad believe they meet God when a janitor (Frankie Faison, DO THE RIGHT THING) talks to them at the planetarium. And there’s an all time classic scene featuring the culmination of many of the jokes and an appearance by Christopher Lee (POLICE ACADEMY: MISSION TO MOSCOW). If you hate silliness, yes, you will hate this movie, because it is silliness in its purest form. (Stupidness.)

FOR THOSE WHO HAVE SEEN IT: These mean nothing out of context, but for those who have seen it, I would like to mention two lines that, to my tastes, are about as funny as jokes come.

1. “Now that’s a well made shoe!”

2. “RELEASE THE DRIVE BEE!”

Come to think of it these would both make good t-shirt slogans.

Ah shit, there I go listing funny parts again. Outside of my small group of STUPIDS faithful, people who think there’s anything funny in the movie tend to cite the scene where Stanley accidentally gets on the daytime talk show Rolonda and decides to sing “I’m My Own Grandpa.” I don’t get that being your favorite part, but at least it’s kind of funny. The action climax, where they sort of Jar Jar their way through a warehouse fight with the arms dealers, isn’t my favorite part either, but it works despite itself. It constantly threatens to get too broad and slapsticky, but they just fit in so many good jokes that it keeps working. My favorite is when Joan considers a row of fire extinguishers, instead picks up a flamethrower, and is disappointed with the results.

A rare part I find unfunny: some slapstick Niedermeyer does with some binoculars. On the other hand, I find the slapstick he’s watching through the binoculars (Stanley unable to extricate himself from an inner tube) very funny. I never would’ve guessed it, but Tom Arnold is good at physical comedy.

Years later Landis defended the movie by saying it was made for ten year olds. It is, after all, based on the series of four picture books written by Harry Allard and illustrated by James Marshall between 1974 and 1989. But I don’t really buy that. It’s like saying PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE is for ten year olds – I did love it as a ten year old, but it gets better every year. I don’t think THE STUPIDS works better for any particular age, it’s just straight up funny shit. Screenwriter Brent Forrester had won an Emmy for The Ben Stiller Show, he’d been working on The Simpsons for four years (he wrote “Homerpalooza”!) and did a little Mr. Show around this time. Me and 2-4 of the other people in the theater were at the exact right age and nerd level to love that exact shit, and this spoke to us.

The Stupids have a cat and a dog created through stop motion by Chiodo Brothers Studios and animators Ken Burton and Joel Fletcher, who both worked on Pee-wee’s Playhouse. They seem to notice all of the family’s errors and try to warn them, to no avail. Admittedly these bits are more cute than funny, but I appreciate the nod to the characters’ picture book origins. Along with this, the pastel colors in their house and on their tacky clothes help paint them as larger-than-life cartoons within an otherwise ordinary world. (Costume designer: Deborah Nadoolman, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK; Production designer: Phil Dagor, HARD TARGET.)

Landis has his usual director cameos. I noticed David Cronenberg and Mick Garris, but not Atom Egoyan, Robert Wise, Gillo Pontecorvo, Costa-Gavras or Gurinder Chadha. This was probly the first time I noticed that a kid who gets paint splashed on him and says a line is Max Landis. Oh well. What’re you gonna do? It’s his son.

Watching it today it almost plays like a commentary on modern QAnon/Pizzagate type delusions. Stanley believes he’s discovered a conspiracy of returning people’s mail to some guy named “Sender,” and Buster and Petunia read spurious meaning into every “clue” they come across, including the fortune from a fortune cookie. But the Stupids don’t have a mean cell in their bodies. They don’t get off on the fantasy of punishing bad guys. In fact, at the end when Stanley confronts the guy he thinks is Sender (played by Captain Kangaroo himself, Bob Keeshan), he lets him go and gives him a pep talk about staying on the right path.

I already mentioned the stupid fucking Razzies, but now I want to mention that The Stinkers Bad Movie Awards gave their special “Founders Award – What Were They Thinking and Why?” to two movies: THE STUPIDS and THE PHANTOM. I think that’s interesting. Two movies I’ve loved for 30 full years. (The same award went to SHORT CUTS in ’93. No joke.)

Well, motherfuckers, prepare to be UNO reversed. I’m giving the Vern Good Movies Founders Award for I’m Glad They Were Thinking of Me and Not Your Boring Ass to the same two movies, THE PHANTOM and THE STUPIDS, for embodying the spirit of Slam Evil Summer. They’re movies that stand out for being a little odd, for not even remotely giving a fuck about what was considered cool at the time, and therefore being way cooler.

Thank you if you read along with any of this retrospective, and thanks for putting up with me as I lagged behind by three weeks. Other than thinking THE FRIGHTENERS and ESCAPE FROM L.A. aren’t quite as untouchable as I thought at the time, and not really liking THE ARRIVAL much at all, I suppose I didn’t learn much. But I do feel my theory panned out: 1996 was an interesting movie summer more for its so-called failures than for its successes. I still believe THE PHANTOM, THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, THE STUPIDS and HARRIET THE SPY are really special movies, as little as they may have caught on three decades later. THE CABLE GUY still works, and all the main topics of discourse at the time (he was paid too much, it’s too dark) seem so ludicrous now. And KINGPIN is great! I forgot that it got bad reviews. Doesn’t matter anymore.

It’s okay that those more popular movies of the time are still more popular now. Not everything has to be for everybody. Most of the best stuff probly isn’t. We used to know that.

I really enjoyed revisiting the acclaimed arthouse/indie type works from the time: DEAD MAN, WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE, HEAVY, TRAINSPOTTING, MANNY & LO. Those were given their respect at the time but I haven’t rewatched them as much as THE PHANTOM, and they still hit.

Also I’m glad I counted the re-release of SWITCHBLADE SISTERS as a ’96 movie. That was fun too.

Actually worse than I remembered: THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO, JOE’S APARTMENT. But let’s not dwell on that.

Surprisingly better than I remembered: DRAGONHEART, SOLO.

Best first time watches: I guess WALKING AND TALKING? I found THE PALLBEARER, HEAVEN’S PRISONERS and THE TRIGGER EFFECT interesting, if not good. I guess I was too up on movies at that time to have missed the really good ones (unless I’m still missing them – I had to skip a few).

Summer officially ends tomorrow, so I guess I got in under the wire. Consider that evil slammed.