Undescribable Perfection

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

A better movie than expected, but what is with all the comments about it being a comedy. If it is, it must have been the first one where i didn't laugh once.Al Franken takes on a gutsy project but it is really not that interesting. It has some nice characters but it is a little too nice. Maybe it was watered down for a PG-13 rating to sell it to a teen audience. If it was, it shows a serious miscalculation of marketing strategy. There is virtually nothing here that appeal to that group.It did get the addiction part almost right, although the ending is a little too nice again. I wish they would have ended it on the intervention stuff and left the last scene out.Still, I am glad I saw it, because it was somewhat different and the main character wasn't as annoying as I thought. Just wish they had made it a little more raw.

A lot of users compared this to other SNL movies, which is reasonable since it's based on an SNL sketch, but in some respects is totally unfair. The SNL sketch was played for laughs. This is a DRAMA, not a comedy (despite having lots of funny scenes). The focus is on Stuart's (Al Franken) dysfunctional family, which dysfunction stems from his father's (Harris Yulin) alcoholism, which cows Stuart's mother into submission, drives his sister to overeating, and is gradually turning his brother (the always-great Vincent D'Onofrio) into a copy of his father. All of this has turned Stuart into the self-help addict we see on SNL. The other key character is Stuart's friend and self-help partner Laura San Giacomo (also turning in a great performance), who shares a wonderful platonic relationship with Stuart based on mutual empathy. The scene where San Giacomo describes her meeting with her biological father almost brought tears to my eyes. I give this an 8 because it loses some points for inconsistency by trying too hard to be a comedy during the first half of the movie. But once the real drama kicks in during the second half, it becomes brilliantly poignant. Less even than "American Beauty," (its closest analog) but just as good at depicting family dysfunction. Highly recommended.

I really liked this movie. And no, I have never been in a 12 step program. But we all know people like this and we all share some of these experiences. But beside all that, it is funny. Al Franken is excellent. Julia Sweeney's "I'm sorry" character is hysterical. Sure it's a little movie but great if you are interested in human behavior.

Stuart Smalley is a new-age self help guru with a line in catchphrases `I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and dog-gone it, people like me!'. When his show on public-access cable is cancelled he falls into a depression, however a family death brings him back to his home town where he finds that his family have enough issues to keep him busy for months.Stuart Smalley was created by Al Franken for Saturday Night Live. In the UK we've never seen this so I can only imagine that Stuart is used to poke fun at self-help, therapy etc - and I imagine that in 3 minute sketches that he can be very good. However stretched out to 90 minutes it doesn't cut the mustard. The story allows for some funny moments - mainly the flashback scenes where Stuart recalls instances in his family life. However the majority of the film is given over to drama and sentiment as the family deal with their issue. This sentiment is poorly handled and doesn't sit well at all. Even if this was a normal film, which it isn't, it wouldn't work, however building this drama round a spoof character makes it even less workable.I really wanted to like this but I'm afraid that it just wasn't very funny. From Saturday Night Live I expected much more laughs - even of the hit and miss style. However I chuckled 3 or 4 times and that was it. Franken plays Stuart like a mockery of himself and does manage to squeeze some jokes out of the material, but he can't make the character do drama at all. The rest of the cast are filled with plenty of well-known faces (Laura San Giacomo, D'Onofrio, Harris Yulin) and a great comedy director in Ramis, but none of them can really do much with the material.As much as I wanted to like this, this is just yet another failed movie project to come from the occasionally successful Saturday Night life stable.