Stealth Entertainment: Big Stan
By Scott Lumley
July 6, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
But Hollywood's loss is our gain. There is a veritable treasure trove of film out there that you may not have seen. I will be your guide to this veritable wilderness of unwatched film. It will be my job to steer you towards the action, adventure, drama and comedy that may have eluded you, and at the same time, steer you away from some truly unwatchable dreck.
Hopefully we'll stumble across some entertainment that may have slid under your radar. Wish us luck.
Big Stan (2008)
When it comes to Stealth Entertainment, I may very well have found the stealthiest film of all time. Big Stan never actually had a theatrical release in the US. It did not have a marketing campaign that I saw and its actual theatrical take was a mere $8,335,587.00. The majority of that box office came from Russia, Spain, Mexico and Australia.
Big Stan is the story of, well, Stan Minton. Stan is a very successful con man whose luck runs out and is arrested for fraud and convicted. Facing three years in jail, he hires a crooked lawyer to help him, but all the lawyer can do is get his surrender date delayed six months so he can get his affairs in order. The lawyer recommends that Stan skip town, but Stan can't do that as his assets have been frozen and if he does it will mean forfeiting millions of dollars. Unsure of what jail is like, Stan ventures out to a seedy, run down, rough looking bar and proceeds to pay a large burly man to explain to him what prison is like.
Stan learns to his horror that prison is incredibly violent and that his most likely fate involves sexual assault, A *LOT* of sexual assault. Stan's interview subject explains that in prison, it's all about violence, and rape is the most violent act there is, so Rob should probably expect it frequently because Stan is about as threatening as a kitten at this point.
Yes, you read that right folks, Rob Schneider made a comedy action film about prison rape. Apparently he felt that the high concept stories about male gigolos were tapped out. And when I say that Schneider made this film, I mean that he really made it. Schneider acted in it, directed it and I think there's a fairly good chance he may have been involved in the catering as well because the very first thing that comes up in the credits is the name of the on-set catering company. (Sorry Rob, I don't remember it.)
Yet while I mock Schneider here, I have to admit this film had me laughing a lot, and pretty hard in some cases. The story doesn't really center on prison rape. It's actually aimed at Stan's desperate attempts to avoid becoming a victim of prison rape. That's a fine distinction, but an important one. After Stan learns that he's about to become a goldfish in a shark tank, he takes the tips given to him by the convict he interviewed and starts applying them. He goes out and gets some "ink" that will make him less appealing. He tries to take self defense courses. He gets his wife Mindy (Played by House veteran Jennifer Morrison as a clueless trophy wife) to help him prepare for the possibility of a prison assault with a bedroom prosthetic.
None of this (with the possible exception of a rectal tattoo running joke) is very effective. Stan even suffers the indignity of being beaten up by a smaller man at a self defense course and is tossed out of the class and into the street. Of course, that turns out to be his salvation, because as he is laying there in the gutter, he gains the attention of the "Master" (David Carradine), who in turn agrees to train Stan.
Stan's training is long, rigorous and painful, but in six months the master turns tapioca into steel and pronounces Stan ready to serve his time. Stan enters prison, is processed for entry by the guards and proceeds to pick a fight with the largest, most threatening predator in the prison, played by MMA monster Bob Sapp. (For those of you that don't know, Bob Sapp is a 6'4" 325 pound former pro football player who looks like he was carved out of steel.) I won't ruin how that turns out for everybody, but I will say that whoever did the fight choreography in this movie did a spectacular job. During some of the less than absurd fight scenes I sat there believing that Schneider could in fact kick my ass. Roger Ebert may need to be cautious here.
Unfortunately, the movie loses a little steam in the second half. Stan's stay in prison is far less exciting or humorous than his actual arrival, and there are some sub plots that develop but none of them match up to the initial premise of a scared little con man trying to remove himself from the prison food chain. So while the first two-thirds of the film were fairly dynamic and frequently very funny, the last third devolves into typical Hollywood laziness. The film goes for the required happy ending and it feels really forced. It was actually very disappointing that film as daring as this one in subject matter went the route that it did. The expected battle at the end of the film between Stan and his arch rival is well done and funny, but it's not enough to carry the film to a satisfying conclusion.
Look, this is not a perfect film. This is not Oscar material. It's a Rob Schneider film, for crying out loud. What it is, however, is frequently very funny or very violent. There are some really good jokes in this film before it tails off and when it isn't funny there's a fight scene thrown in to keep things flowing. The movie flows quite well in the first two thirds and there are a couple of memorable scenes here that you will want to share with your friends.
Big Stan is what I call stupid entertainment. It's not thought-provoking, but it is funny. It's violent but not grotesquely so. The movie has a disturbing premise but manages to find ways to laugh at it and make jokes with it, even at the risk of being tasteless. I'm not certain you'll want to buy this one and ad it to your collection, but if it does show up in your video store or on cable you can give this a watch and feel assured that this is in fact some disposable comedy entertainment.
Especially the tattoo joke. Watch it, you'll see.