O.C. and Stiggs

Like many of Robert Altman's smaller movies, O.C. and Stiggs is under-appreciated. Most of the teenage movies that clogged up the mid-80's consisted of nothing more than stupid sex jokes and gross-out shots designed to humiliate straw men villains. O.C. and Stiggs is a movie where you feel that all sorts of things are possible. It's humorous in the best sense.

It remains a mystery why some of Altman's films are overrated (e.g. The Player and Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean), while others are immediately forgotten.

I loved the National Lampoon magazine story O.C. & Stiggs was based on but this film is nothing like it's predecessor. It does however back up my long held opinion that the only reason Robert Altman has been allowed to make films after 'Nashville' is because of the prolific amount of drug use amongst movie critics. Altman has an uncanny ability to produce films that, regardless of the budget, look low budget. This one reads like a student film or worse. The two edgy & cool leads are horribly miscast with two very uncool comedic softies that completely undermine the angst and subversion of the original characters. Picture Jim Varney as Hunter S. Thompson or Paulie Shore as Ferris Bueller. Rather than subversive the material comes off looking juvenile and just mean spirited. But for those who insist on pretending they love Altman films, no worry. There is plenty of bad photography, busy cameras, scenes that makes no sense, overlapping dialogue and most of all, a huge cast of name actors that all look like they are practicing their lines.

By far the most wacked-out teen comedy of all time, this bizarre Robert Altman nugget was adapted from a single issue of National Lampoon magazine, the 1982 "Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs" special. The plot is simple: O.C. and Stiggs are two bored, horny, Arizona high schoolers who find immense satisfaction in tormenting the Schwab family (the patriarch is fabulously portrayed by Altman regular Paul Dooley). Over summer vacation, they canoe to Mexico, buy a machine gun from Dennis Hopper, organize a King Sunny Ade concert, and try to woo Cynthia Nixon. There's no sentimentality in this film whatsoever. The two leads are unlikable, homophobic morons, but it still adds up into a remarkably funny endeavor. If you're not in the mood for something with a profound statement to make and enjoy laughing at bizarre non-sequiturs, give this film a try.

Like many others who have left comments about this movie, I was first introduced to O.C & Stiggs through the National Lampoon stories. I can't remember ever laughing at anything I read as much as I laughed at the story of O.C. & Stiggs and their summer vacation. Now, I'm not judging the movie O.C. & Stiggs based on my dissapointment on how closely or remotely it followed the print version. I'm basing my comments soley on the movie itself. This is a bad movie. This is an amazingly bad movie. This is such an amazingly bad movie it must be one of the worst movies ever. It is that bad. This movie is bad in every way a movie can be bad: script, acting, directing, cinematography, lighting, sound, and probably gaffing, best boying, and catering. What the hell happened? Having Pauley Shore, Keanu Reeves, or even Kevin Costner standing in front of a video camera for an hour and a half reading the original story from the magazine would have been 10 times funnier than this..movie.

This movie was great when I saw it, so great that I bought a previously used tape at a video store. O.C. and Stiggs try to get even with a family of rich snobs who ruined people. They get even, and it is very funny.