MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Stuart’: The Joke Gets Lost in the Mix

Al Franken is good enough, he’s certainly smart enough. So, doggone it, why is “Stuart Saves His Family” so mediocre?

On “Saturday Night Live,” Franken’s Stuart Smalley is a hilarious concoction: a “caring nurturer” with his own public-access TV show “Daily Affirmation,” a wardrobe of fuzzy pastel sweaters and an idiot grin. Stuart--not a licensed therapist--is every woozy balm dispenser we’ve ever seen on cable; he’s so touchy-feely that he gives you the heebie-jeebies.

What makes Franken so funny on “Saturday Night Live”--and so touching--is his deep-down commitment to Stuart’s dumpy self-love. Stuart has been through so many 12-step programs that he’s groggy with uplift. (His sessions with Michael Jordan, or the “Bobbitts,” were screwball classics.)

The problem with “Stuart Saves His Family” is that Franken, who wrote the screenplay based very loosely on his best-selling mock-self-help book-- “I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!”--is starting to take Stuart altogether too seriously. It’s kind of creepy. He’s made an inspirational goofball comedy. Stuart rescues his hyper-dysfunctional family in Minneapolis and triumphs over his compulsion to gorge Fig Newtons.

It was much funnier when we didn’t see Stuart’s family. And, if we have to see them, it would have been much funnier if they were strait-laced ‘50s sitcom types. But Franken, and his director Harold Ramis, want to demonstrate how our families screw us up--and they really mean it. So the Smalley family is a gaggle of horrors: His mom (Shirley Knight) seems lobotomized, his dad (Harris Yulin) is a ramrod nutcase, his sister Jodie is a chronic whiner/overeater, and his brother (Vincent D’Onofrio) lives at home and puffs marijuana. Stuart is the most normal in the bunch. He’s a victim .

Franken also co-wrote the script for “When a Man Loves a Woman,” which was a touchy-feely “Days of Wine and Roses” for the ‘90s. Some of that film’s humidity seems to have dripped onto “Stuart Saves His Family.” Doesn’t Franken realize how funny he is when he’s making fun of Victim Theology? He may be the only person in America who takes Stuart Smalley at his word.

* MPAA rating: PG-13, for language and substance abuse. Times guidelines: It includes marijuana inhaling.

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‘Stuart Saves His Family’ Al Franken: Stuart Smalley Laura San Giacomo: Julia Vincent D’Onofrio: Donnie Harris Yulin: Stuart’s dad A Paramount Pictures presentation in association with Constellation Films. Director Harold Ramis. Producer Lorne Michaels. Executive producers C. O. Erickson and Dinah Minot. Screenplay by Al Franken. Cinematographer Lauro Escorel. Editor Pembroke Herring. Costumes Susie DeSanto. Music Marc Shaiman. Production design Joseph T. Garrity. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.