Stay Tuned
Long beforePleasantville, this 1992 comedy featured a family  taking its problems out of the real world and into the loopy fictions of television  entertainment. John Ritter and Pam Dawber star as Roy and Helen Knable, a  suburban couple with a host of marital problems, most of which have to do  with Roy's couch-potato attachment to his TV's remote control. Things take a  hellish turn when the devilish Spike (Jeffrey Jones) turns up at the Knable house offering Roy a great deal on the ultimate satellite-TV system.Surprise, surprise: The contract signed by the less-than-cautious Roy  actually requires a one-time payment of his soul. He and Helen find  themselves sucked into their own television set, where they are kept on the run through such monstrous fare as "I Love Lucifer" and "Northern Overexposure."  Eventually, their disenchanted kids (David Tom, Heather McComb) discover mom  and dad are on TV, in a whole new sense of the term, and they set about  rescuing them.A genuine novelty,Stay Tunedis powered along by a chain of  imaginative sequences, most memorably an original cartoon by Warner legend  Chuck Jones that cleverly integrates Ritter and Dawber's characters. The  script's implicit social satire about the overbearing nature of television on  underachieving lives isn't lost on the lively cast or director Peter Hyams  (Timecop), easily one of the most imaginative action filmmakers  around. The old rivalry between television and movies carries on in this  clever parody, and the feud has rarely been so much fun. With tons of  supporting players, including SCTV legend Eugene Levy,Saturday Night  Liveannouncer Don Pardo, and hip-hop performers Salt-n-Pepa.--Tom  Keogh