Satan goes door to door, recruiting couch potatoes to risk life and limb on a naughty network of low-rent satellite TV stations, in this tame example of an early '90s PG comedy. It's UHF with a dash of The Running Man, minus Weird Al's musical talents, cultural understanding and strange personal magnetism. John Ritter is in the lead, playing a self-centered loser who's on the verge of trading his marriage for a life of late-night television binges, but the acting is fully phoned-in and the character isn't really worth rooting for. Jeffrey Jones is appropriately hammy as his antithesis, a sleazy salesman-tinted devil who cranks the cackling personality up to eleven, while Eugene Levy gets some characteristic sidekick work as a subservient lesser demon.
The whole ruse is presented like a sketch show, a lengthy line of gimmicks and concepts that rotate as Ritter and his long-suffering wife navigate a grid of themed channels, but none of the puns are worth our time. Wayne's World is parodied as Duane's Underworld and hosted by a pair of burnout zombies. Beverly Hills 90210 is transplanted to the 90666 zip code. The Golden Girls become The Golden Ghouls. All the punchlines are like that; witless, lazy, softball-level humor that's neutered by the obvious mandate to snag a wide-audience MPAA rating. This concept doesn't really work as an all-ages schtick, and the jokes don't have any sting without a darker, harder edge. No wonder it flopped at the box office.
Review by drqshadowBlockedParent2021-03-08T15:15:07Z
Satan goes door to door, recruiting couch potatoes to risk life and limb on a naughty network of low-rent satellite TV stations, in this tame example of an early '90s PG comedy. It's UHF with a dash of The Running Man, minus Weird Al's musical talents, cultural understanding and strange personal magnetism. John Ritter is in the lead, playing a self-centered loser who's on the verge of trading his marriage for a life of late-night television binges, but the acting is fully phoned-in and the character isn't really worth rooting for. Jeffrey Jones is appropriately hammy as his antithesis, a sleazy salesman-tinted devil who cranks the cackling personality up to eleven, while Eugene Levy gets some characteristic sidekick work as a subservient lesser demon.
The whole ruse is presented like a sketch show, a lengthy line of gimmicks and concepts that rotate as Ritter and his long-suffering wife navigate a grid of themed channels, but none of the puns are worth our time. Wayne's World is parodied as Duane's Underworld and hosted by a pair of burnout zombies. Beverly Hills 90210 is transplanted to the 90666 zip code. The Golden Girls become The Golden Ghouls. All the punchlines are like that; witless, lazy, softball-level humor that's neutered by the obvious mandate to snag a wide-audience MPAA rating. This concept doesn't really work as an all-ages schtick, and the jokes don't have any sting without a darker, harder edge. No wonder it flopped at the box office.