Stuck On You! (1983/Troma)
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: C Film: B-
Where did the great sense of outrageous comedy come
from? No doubt the Screwball Comedies
of the 1930s and 1940s were key, but a new spirit of that comedy surfaced in
the 1960s with The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night and a series of
independent comedies (Greetings, Putney Swope, Kentucky Fried
Movie) that the major studios eventually caught up with in the late
1980s. Porky’s, Animal House,
Meatballs and Caddyshack were among the hits that resulted. Lloyd
Kaufman was a film producer at the time and he decided to do some independent
comedies of his own with producer/director partner Michael Herz launched a
company on them. The result was Troma,
a company that has survived for three decades.
Stuck On You! was the most widely promoted of them all in 1983
and it put them on the map permanently.
Before jumping into the Horror genre permanently, Troma
was pushing the limits of sex and what we now know as political incorrectness,
not caring what anyone thought and well into the Spielberg/Lucas era of
Reaganesque mall movie cinema, there was Troma with films like this. Here, a couple is in court suing for a
divorce. She (Virginia Penta) thinks he
(Mark Mikulski) is an oaf who has got to go, with is fine with him, because he
thinks that she has become beyond joyless.
Add a crazy judge (Irwin Corey) presiding over the case, eccentrics at
every corner, surreal fantasy moments, wacky outbursts, sex jokes and chickens
at every corner and you have one of the last key films of that cycle before the
comedy genre became regressive and insanely censored. Stuck On You! is not perfect, but it has aged at least as
well as something like Mel Brooks’ History Of The World: Part 1 (reviews
elsewhere on this site) and even works as a final time capsule of that
era. It’s funny enough too.
The 1.33 X 1 image shows it’s age a bit, but it looks good
for its age otherwise with decent fleshtones and some good cases of definition
and color throughout. The Dolby Digital
2.0 Mono is also good for its age, with jokes and silly cover songs clear
enough. Extras include four Troma
trailers, two featurettes, Lloyd Kaufman introduction and audio commentary by
Kaufman very much worth listening to.
- Nicholas Sheffo
