30 Years Ago Today, One Of The Worst Comedies Ever Made Was Released In Cinemas
by Witney Seibold · /FilmHarry Allred's picture book "The Stupids Step Out," illustrated by James Marshall, was first published in 1974 as an antidote to the squeaky-clean suburban bliss so often encountered in kiddo books like "Dick & Jane." The Stupids, like their namesake, were a family of dummies who were too stupid to fully comprehend the world around them. The two Stupid children, Buster and Petunia, for instance, don't know why they cannot slide up a banister. When it's bath time, Buster, Petunia, and Mr. and Mrs. Stupid, along with their dog, Kitty, get into the tub with their clothes on. They fear turning on the water, because they don't want to get their clothes wet. This is the kind of whimsical juxtaposition that is immensely appealing to second-graders.
"The Stupids Step Out" was followed by "The Stupids Have a Ball" in 1978, "The Stupids Die" in 1981 (they're fine, the power just goes out), and "The Stupids Take Off" in 1989. The books never had much cultural clout, but some weird kids might recall reading them and chortling.
There was, evidently, enough interest in "The Stupids" in 1996 to spawn a live-action feature film directed by John Landis. No one wanted it, and no one saw it; the film notoriously made only $3.4 million on a $25 million budget. "The Stupids" starred Tom Arnold (from "True Lies") as Stanley Stupid, Jessica Lundy as his wife, Joan, and Bug Hall and Alex McKenna as Buster and Petunia. The family cat is a bubble-shaped CGI cartoon figure. The film has only a 20% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 15 reviews) and was nominated for several Razzies (it "lost" Worst Picture to Andrew Bergman's "Striptease," but Tom Arnold "won" Worst Actor). So those who did see it hated it.
No one saw The Stupids
The premise of stupid people doing stupid things might be enough to sustain four kid-friendly picture books, but for a feature film, the studio typically demands a more conventional story. The filmmakers had to invent adventures and emotional arcs for the Stupid family, revealing how foolish the entire enterprise was. Also, Tom Arnold was miscast as Stanley Stupid, unable to bring the appropriate level of moronic fecklessness to the role.
The plot of "The Stupids" involves Stanley and Joan discovering that they are the victims of a conspiracy, as someone is sneaking into their house weekly and stealing garbage from their garbage cans. The old axiom is true: everything is a conspiracy when you don't know how anything works. In investigating where their garbage is going, Stanley runs afoul of one Colonel Neidermeyer (Mark Metcalf) who is selling black market weapons to terrorist groups. Joan, Buster, and Petunia begin to figure that Stanley has been disappeared by a shadowy organization, and that the police are in on the conspiracy. In the post-4-Chan 2010s, a movie about idiots who believe in wild conspiracies might have hit harder. In the '90s it was, well, stupid.
The Stupids are cartoons, of course, who dress in exaggerated clothing like they're on their way to Easter mass in 1954. They live in a wildly pristine home painted in pastels and bright colors. Like in the books, they sleep in their clothes. Despite their belief in conspiracies, the Stupids are generally chipper and cheery people. One can see John Landis aching for a camp satire like what John Waters might make, but failing miserably. Nothing about the movie is funny.
There are a lot of weird celebrity cameos in The Stupids
Of course, having "dumb" protagonists is a theatrical tradition as old as humanity, so making a movie about a family of idiots is a fine enough idea. Heck, "Dumb and Dumber" was a huge hit just a few years earlier. The film even starred a very game Christopher Lee as a secret evil antagonist. The idea wasn't necessarily bad. It was the execution that was off. John Landis doesn't seem to know how to make this kind of comedy, despite having directed comedy ultra-hits like "Coming to America," "¡Three Amigos!," "Trading Places," "The Blues Brothers," and "Animal House."
Landis was losing his clout in Hollywood at the time, and bombs like "The Stupids" didn't help his career. He followed "The Stupids" with "The Blues Brothers 2000," and no one liked it. Weirdly enough, though, Landis still had enough pull to attract multiple high-profile directors to make cameo appearances. Atom Egoyan ("The Sweet Hereafter") plays a security guard. Norman Jewison ("Fiddler on the Roof") plays a TV director. David Cronenberg ("The Fly," "Crash") turns up as a postal worker, and Robert Wise ("The Day the Earth Stood Still," "The Sound of Music") plays the Stupids' neighbor. Most bafflingly, Gillo Pontecorvo ("The Battle of Algiers") and Costa-Gavras ("Z") appear in "The Stupids," and I'm not making that up. A pre-"Bend It Like Beckham" Gurinder Chandha plays a reporter alongside Mick Garris ("The Stand," "The Shining").
As mentioned, no critics liked "The Stupids." Derek Elley reviewed the film for Variety, and he noted that "The Stupids" wasn't stupid enough. It was too much like a movie, killing all the absurdity and comedy dead. You may be curious, but know that it's very, very bad.