Stay Tuned

Sometimes the material's rather too gruesome for a family-oriented film, but as one HVTV intern says to the Devil, "It isn't the blood that bothers me, so much as the lack of subtext." Read full review

Likely to be popular among kids, as well as the aforementioned slugs, Stay Tuned is an amiable, end-of-summer, lite refreshment making good fun of suboobia. [17 Aug 1992]

It's an amiable little low-grade comedy that gets by with goofing on movies and TV shows as John Ritter, a couch potato Faust, signs up for a cable package from hell (it's got 666 channels - the devil's number, get it?) from satanic Jeffrey Jones. [14 Aug 1992, p.46]

The irony of it all is that "Stay Tuned" is itself a TV show, filled with razzle-dazzle, but unfolding with the wispy depth of a sit-com. That makes the casting of TV veterans Ritter and Dawber totally appropriate (and lends the physically hilarious Ritter a good-natured dig at "Three's Company"), but Parker and Jennewein don't capitalize on the potential of their ideas. The nuggets are there ("don't watch so much television" is the basic extent of the message), but if taken more seriously, "Stay Tuned" might've been a funny and deeply affecting film. Instead it's just funny . . . which is OK. [15 Aug 1992, p.C3]

It's cultural fast food delivered in a quick, painless package for the shrinking attention span of the MTV generation. [17 Aug 1992, p.C6]