It takes a special kind of creative ambition to produce a film called The Stupids and then deliver something even dumber than the title promised. Directed by John Landis—yes, that John Landis, the same guy who once gave us The Blues Brothers, Animal House, and An American Werewolf in London—this film is a catastrophic free fall into the underbelly of 1990s family “comedy,” where plot coherence, humor, and dignity all go to die.
It is a movie so aggressively idiotic, it feels like it was written during a NyQuil hallucination. Watching it doesn’t just make you feel dumb—it actively seeks to lower your IQ in real time. If cinema were a restaurant, The Stupids would be the back alley dumpster, filled with expired cheese jokes and leftover cartoon physics.
🥴 The Plot (or Whatever This Is)
Tom Arnold stars as Stanley Stupid, a man so blissfully brain-dead he makes Forrest Gump look like Carl Sagan. Stanley believes his garbage is being “stolen” every week. He launches a full-blown investigation that accidentally leads him into a conspiracy involving illegal arms trading, secret government documents, and… oh, who cares. None of it matters. The plot is a macaroni noodle flung against a mirror and left there to dry.
His wife (Jessica Lundy) and their two children, Buster and Petunia, are equally lobotomized, wandering through their own side quests like escaped patients from a family-friendly psych ward. They believe the sun follows them because they’re chosen. They address letters to “Mr. Sender.” They think vacuum cleaners are monsters. Somewhere out there, Darwin is spinning in his grave fast enough to power a small city.
🤡 Tom Arnold: Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Universe
This movie was supposed to launch Tom Arnold into the stratosphere as a lovable comedy lead. Instead, it launched him into cinematic infamy and straight into the arms of Hollywood purgatory. It’s not that he’s bad in The Stupids—he’s actually too good at playing a man who likely failed kindergarten multiple times.
Arnold commits to the bit with such wide-eyed, manic sincerity that you start to wonder if the line between character and actor was blurred somewhere around day three of filming. His voice is a shrill, nasal assault. His facial expressions hover somewhere between “eager toddler” and “possessed ventriloquist dummy.” If slapstick were a felony, Tom Arnold would be serving a life sentence without parole.
He sings. He dances. He wears disguises. At one point, he has a one-on-one conversation with his own reflection. It’s like watching Pee-Wee Herman after a head injury.
💣 Landis, We Need to Talk
John Landis directing The Stupids is like Orson Welles directing a Laffy Taffy commercial. It makes no sense. Once a king of controlled chaos and genre mastery, Landis here directs with the touch of a man whose only note was, “Make it louder and dumber.” Gone is the tight timing of Three Amigos. Gone is the flair of American Werewolf. What’s left is a sluggish, lifeless collection of vignettes stitched together by pratfalls and fart logic.
It’s as though Landis tried to make a satire of stupidity and got consumed by it. The movie mocks itself into oblivion. It doesn’t wink at you—it kicks you in the shin and drools on your shoes.
🎬 Production Values from the Garbage Can
The sets are bright, plastic, and garishly over-lit, like someone shot an episode of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood on an amphetamine bender. The music is a hodgepodge of zany orchestral stabs and cartoonish whams that sound like they were ripped from a Sega Genesis demo tape.
There’s a dream sequence involving space aliens that looks like it was rendered using a Nintendo 64 and a bar napkin. And the CGI? Imagine Tron had a hangover and vomited into Windows 95. It’s that level of digital rot.
🛠 Jokes Written in Crayon
Let’s sample the comedy buffet:
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Stanley thinks the name “Sender” on return addresses is a person.
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He talks to his car like it’s a horse.
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He mistakes a mail chute for a trash chute and nearly dies.
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There’s an extended musical number about being “my own grandpa.”
If you laughed at any of that, congratulations—you are legally dead inside.
The humor is lowest-common-denominator sludge, designed to entertain children but too slow for them and too asinine for adults. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a pie in the face, but the pie is made of drywall and regret.
🧟 Cameos of the Damned
What’s more tragic than a bad comedy? A bad comedy that ropes in talented people as accessories to its crimes.
Christopher Lee shows up in a baffling role as an evil military man. He looks confused, and you will be too. Jenny McCarthy cameos as a reporter. Bug Hall (yes, the kid from The Little Rascals) is here to add childlike wonder and brainless narration. And the rest of the supporting cast is filled with actors who were probably just trying to pay off dental work.
Every single cameo is like a cry for help with SAG card benefits.
💀 Death by Family Comedy
The Stupids is what happens when studio execs assume that because kids laugh at bananas, they’ll also laugh at being repeatedly bludgeoned by a banana for 90 minutes. It’s not just unfunny—it’s anti-funny. Jokes don’t land—they trip over their shoelaces, fall into a manhole, and emerge with the word “kill me” scribbled in pudding.
There’s a way to do surreal, dumb humor well. Airplane! did it. The Naked Gun perfected it. The Stupids smothers it in bad wigs and drives it into a wall made of broken punchlines.
🎯 Final Verdict: ★☆☆☆☆ (1 out of 5 brain cells)
A spectacular failure of tone, writing, and intent. Watching The Stupids is like locking yourself in a room with a clown who’s had a stroke and thinks his horn is a political manifesto. It’s not just dumb—it’s aggressively lobotomized, as if crafted by people who mistook idiocy for charm.
It’s called The Stupids, and it lives up to its name in ways even the cruelest of critics could never have imagined. If you’re considering watching it for the morbid curiosity… maybe just hit yourself in the head with a frying pan instead. It’ll save you 94 minutes and leave you with more dignity.