Ever since I first saw the theatrical release trailer, I’ve wanted to see this movie. The reviews I read were pretty bad, and I never saw it on any cable channels. Here, on YouTube, I finally found it. Streaming free with ads, like a dream come true.
Now, it goes back far enough that people my age will get it, but not so the younger ones. You’ll get no spoilers here, because even revealing the plot would ruin it. There are so many pop culture references, though, as to have kept my attention (no small feat) and made me laugh out loud, quite an accomplishment.
Let me say it: the beginning is a slow burn, but once the characters are established, it never lets up. Unrelenting and unashamed, it attacks everything about TV and cinema and you have to see it if you have not already.
Pam Dawber (before Mark Harmon turned into a bag of perfumed vinegar and vanished her from just about everything,) is a perfect fit as a fed-up wife and mother, John Ritter is his fumbling best, and this is an hour and a half that will fly past you and leave you in a good mood. Rated PG for mild language and violence, this Peter Hyams (director), Morgan Creek (production company), Warner film was a bomb in theaters in 1992, has lukewarm ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic and did not recover production costs.
At all.
The reasons for the mediocre scores are the reviewers themselves. They just happened not to like dark parodies, which leaves those who do shrugging. They said, “too scary for kids”, “not deep enough” and mundane generic rhetoric.
But it’s also a funny study of good VS evil, and how Satan can be tricked and beaten because his henchmen are operating in eternal darkness.
Memoirs of an American Asshole 