Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Stay Tuned Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman January 9, 2019

Director Peter Hyams' Stay Tuned is a product of its time, but it's also a timeless satire and dire warning about the perils and pitfalls of electronic addiction. Two years later, Hyams would go on to make a movie that really is about time -- Timecop -- but Stay Tuned is the more relevant work, a less fundamentally entertaining film than Timecop but a picture that nicely balances a hard lesson with tongue planted firmly in cheek. The film feels quaint today with its yard-filling satellite dish a prominent visual, and today large screen and small price off-brand flat panel displays are for sale in just about every corner store, featuring technology that even at the bottom of the barrel puts the film's focal 44" CRT to shame. But Hyams keeps the film focused on the idea, not the technology, finely integrating the concept of mismanaged priorities, addiction, and humor in a film that can be boiled down to UHF meets The Running Man, two films released a few years before Stay Tuned and that were undoubtedly, on some level, inspirations for this work.

Everyone has their vices, and for Roy Knable (John Ritter), it’s television. He can’t get enough of the boob tube, and when he’s not at work he’s plopped in front it, watching anything and everything and cheering on his Seattle Sonics from the comfort of home. He’s ignoring his beautiful wife Helen (Pam Dawber) and his children, and Helen has finally had enough. When Roy chooses TV over an honest heart-to-heart conversation with his wife, she destroys Roy’s television and packs her bags. That night, with Roy watching on a small portable unit, a mystery man named Mr. Spike (Jeffrey Jones) comes to the door and informs Roy that he has been “personally selected to receive a most irresistible offer:” a new home entertainment system that offers 666 channels of ultimate, unlimited, and elsewhere unavailable programming. Roy is offered a free trial and seizes the opportunity to up his TV watching game.

He discovers all sorts of new and interesting programs and seems to have fallen into his personal nirvana. But when he goes outside to fiddle with the heavenward-pointing satellite dish to improve reception, he and Helen are sucked into the dish and into a devilishly evil television world, dropped straight into a game show straight out of hell...literally. It turns out eternal damnation awaits if the pair cannot survive 24 hours in a dangerous TV world that is at once familiar and frightening. If they can survive, they get to return home. If not, their punishment is an eternity of misery. Meanwhile, back at home, Roy and Helen’s children, Darryl (David Tom) and Diane (Heather McComb), slowly puzzle out where their parents have gone and feverishly work to save them from the other side of the screen.

UHF did television parody better, and The Running Man did sadistic television starring innocent people better, but Stay Tuned is more concerned with the core family dynamics and television addiction rather than mastering the details around the periphery. It’s still well rounded in both regards to be sure, in reinventing television shows, movies, and classic scenarios for the characters to traverse and rebuilding them to be as deadly and dangerous as possible while still maintaining a relatively friendly and accessible PG-rating exterior. Throughout the film, Roy becomes a private eye, a woman in the French Revolution, a cartoon mouse, an old west gunslinger, a professional wrestler, and a guest on a demented version of Wayne's World, just to name a few of the scenarios. Each of them is fun, they're all unique and diverse, and the result is a film that's well paced as it moves from one set piece to another while maintaining a core character and narrative discipline. It's a good little film that may not have withstood the test of time in terms of its technology but it does remain ever relevant in a world populated by an increasingly alarming number of screen addicts.

Stay Tuned Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Stay Tuned is certainly not the most visually robust movie ever released to Blu-ray. It's a little dull, lacking the bold color intensity and brightness of newer films, but it delivers a solid, capable palette that reveals Roy's green Sonics ballcap, electric blues, a pink sweater, and some other interesting shades throughout the "Hellevision" world to general satisfaction. The colorful cartoon sequence offers a fairly robust palette, while the noir-ish black and white detective segment enjoys a healthy contrast and grayscale. The picture is a little flat and soft but seems fairly accurate to the original photographic source. Light grain is retained and core textural qualities are fine if not unassuming. There are no seriously complex and finely intimate and manicured skin, clothing, or environmental textures, but each earn a passing grade for baseline definition. The image benefits most from the 1080p resolution rather than any super sharpness at the source. There are some nicely detailed wooden structures and dusty terrain textures in the old west segment, which is probably the most purely handsome in the film. Black levels are a little light and skin tones are a touch pasty. The encode is of a high quality, passing difficult scenes in low light and surrounded by smoke with no noticeable issues. A few examples of print wear -- pops, speckles -- are evident but not commonplace.

Stay Tuned Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The included DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track plays rather large for its channel constraints, offering very good front side width whether considering effects or music. The former is often a little more impressive than the latter, but both find plenty of engaging aggression and a sense of spatial awareness, making the most of the constraints and occasionally managing to offer an almost faux sense of surround detail, particularly in the most high energy, involved moments, including big booms of thunder and blowing winds when Roy and Helen are sucked into the satellite, big crowd din at a wrestling match in chapter three, or ripping gunfire, shattering glass, and screaming bystanders in chapter six. Dialogue is adequately detailed and effortlessly images to the front-center stage location.

Stay Tuned Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Stay Tuned's Blu-ray release contains only one extra. The Making of 'Stay Tuned' (1080i upscaled, 4x3, 6:11) offers a plot recap, a character exploration, and takes a look at some of the fictional TV worlds the characters visit. Cast and crew interviews and clips from the film comprise the majority of the feature. This releases does not ship with a slipcover or DVD or digital copies of the film.

Stay Tuned Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If Stay Tuned were remade today, there's no doubt it would center on cell phone addiction, not one man's television watching habits. The film is comically dated today but its core remains fundamentally sound and approachable, a core that is essentially a comically bent warning about the dangers of electronic addiction to the individual and the family structure. The film has a lot of fun throwing its characters into familiar television places and scenarios, and in a world of remakes and re-imaginings it's amazing that the concept hasn't been revisited with a more contemporary digital vessel in the middle of it all. Sony's pressed "manufactured on demand" Blu-ray delivers proficient video and audio. One extra is included. Recommended.