They don't make them like this now. Perfect blend of family adventure, fantasy and comedy. The joke rate is high and it's quite funny. Ritter was great. The many cultural parodies are good but obviously a little dated now. So that a lot of jokes many won't get. The last quarter was a bit slower and the end relied on relentless paced parodies after another, which wasn't a bad idea to add excitement but it was more disorientating and empty. Overal it's still recommended. This should have been a hit in 92.

I love this film! I've always wondered what it would be like to be on tv, this film brings it a whole new comedy value! Haven't seen it in ages, but really want to watch it again now

Film to cure television dependents.

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.