Pretty cool poster. Pity no-one saw it.
This will sound like a backwards recommendation. I wouldn’t bother buying this movie without having seen it first, I’d hardly even bother heading down to the video shop just to grab this particular film.
But…
If you catch it on TV or you’re grabbing a few weeklies and this happens to fall in the pile it is worth the comparatively short 80 minutes just to watch the last 5.
Stuck is allegedly based upon true events, in as far as once upon a time some guys made a film and pretended that they based it on real events.
Stuck revolves around one event and basically three main characters supported by a few very minor bit parts that really don’t add much aside from variety.
Mena Suvari plays a nurse at an aged care facility named Brandi, the key driver here is that she is up for a promotion, but that isn’t as important as how lil’ Mena has really let herself go! No longer do we have the hot jailbait Mena from American Beauty, now a way too convincing white trash skank with a set of the worst cornrows going around in cinema and a slightly bug eyed alien look.
I couldn’t care less how “serious” you are as an actor honey if all you make are films like this (OK) and the sucky Day of the Dead remake, and I didn’t even mention the dozen films you’ve made in the last 10 years that I’ve never heard of.
Smarten yourself up Mena.
Stephen Rae was in The Crying Game many years ago and was actually nominated for an Oscar, Mena was in a major role in the critically acclaimed American Beauty.
Now they are in Stuck, a low, low, lowwwww budget indie flick that went so straight to DVD that people forgot to even bother renting it.
And somehow Rob Schneider keeps getting work.
Stephen Rea is the unfortunate dude of the title, (in the film named Tom), all you need to know is that he is really down on his luck, can’t get a job and has been evicted, he’s on the way down while Brandi with an “i” is apparently on the way up.
Until, Brandi does a little over-celebrating and leaves a club a little wasted and decides to drive home anyway, only she is about as successful as the drunk chick in the PT Cruiser (a car which by the way would be valued at more than the entire budget of this film by my reckoning) from The 40 Year Old Virgin.
Tom is just walking along, minding his own business when…
Whack.
Tom is now a misplaced hood ornament, part window / part man, but here’s the kicker.
He’s not dead. Not even a little, (he is fucked up though).
So Brandi, previously riding high on a mix of good career advancement news and amphetamines, is now a little miffed, and not at all sure of how to handle this new development, so she calls her pimp daddy boyfriend and drug supplier Rasheed, who talks a lot like Arsenio Hall circa Coming To America.
Rasheed is a guy, so rather than deal with the issue of a Pulp Fiction “Man, I shot Marvin in the face” cleanup, he decides that banging the skank would be a better course of action, and he does so and promptly leaves, leaving Brandi with a giant human bug half way through her windshield that has now been there for many hours.
The latter half of the film drags and drags, after all there is only so far you can go when the entire premise of the film is given away in the title.
So we see Brandi fretting, Tom struggling, yelling, squelching and oozing, and various near misses by neighbours and unknowing locals that prolong the inevitable.
So why watch Stuck? Glad you asked. The last 5 minutes are actually quite cool and almost atone for the dreadfully slow and plodding first hour and a bit, almost. Obviously I am talking about the very end so I can’t give anything away but it is pretty satisfying and makes sense given prior events.
Perhaps the moral of the story might be don’t bother giving 80 minutes of screen time to justify a solid 5 minute setpiece?, but the redeeming aspect is that the credits roll immediately after this scene.
Man, if the film lead with a really cool scene and then dragged another 75 minutes, I would be sooooo pissed.
Final Rating – 6 / 10. If you catch it just make sure you watch the last 5 minutes, or avoid this altogether kinda like the other 99.9999999999999% of the global population.
