THE STUPIDS (63)

Directed by: John Landis

Starring: Tom Arnold, Jessica Lundy, Bug Hall, Alex McKenna

The Pitch: There was a stupid man. And he had a stupid wife. Stupid kids, too...

Theo Sez: A potential thesis for the flakier type of academic, rife with Signs o'the Times - a family living an alternative worldview (and who's to say, in these deconstructed times, that it's "inferior" to ours?), turning everything around them into a grand, wacky conspiracy theory : an extended sequence showing the world as they imagine it is a comic highpoint, but the film can also be a metaphor (well, it can) for the democratisation of 90s culture, the way "fringe" notions - from gay marriages to black separatism to alien abductions - are increasingly becoming as valid as the mainstream. It's also, rather more obviously, a cult movie just waiting to happen, its indescribable humour - sort of like a postmodern variation on the NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION movies, or you could just say it has the courage of its own stupidity - marking it out as an original, if nothing else : it combines the innocence-triumphant humour of THE LADYKILLERS or the PINK PANTHER films (or THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE) with the self-conscious archness of AIRPLANE! or the Bill and Ted movies, jokes based on taking everything too literally. Like its theme song, "I'm My Own Grandpa", it's actually cleverer than it likes to appear, geared less to the DUMB AND DUMBER audience than the knowing college types who can appreciate a reference to 2001 or can recognise cameos by David Cronenberg and Atom Egoyan. It's full of oh-they- wouldn't-dare-it's-just-too-ridiculous moments ; but they always do dare - and, surprisingly, it usually works.