Super Sucker

Reading some of the other post here and I think there are too many prudes on here lol

You can NOT take this movie seriously, it's just a dumb comedy and it is Funny!

This movie is a strange combination of the 1950's, 1970's and today. Its like "Leave it to Beaver" meets a soft porn movie ..lol

The laughs really begin when "Mothers little helper" is introduced in the movie :)

Jeff Daniels is hilarious!

I loved it and got a kick out of it!

Which is a compliment, if you've seen it. Its plot is puerile in nature and a base in concept, which will offend the gentle viewer. However, for those who are comfortable enough deal with the nature of the show will find themselves wanting to roll on the floor laughing.

I am particularly delighted how they put the fifties vacuum salesman into today's world, but gave the movie a fifties look and feel. The lighting, styling and many of the mannerisms of the characters had you jumping back and forth between the eras.

This movie, like Escanaba in Da Moonlight, had the strong sense of having been a play. Many of the stagings and acting parts jumped out and said this is a play stage scenario.

Go see this movie and enjoy it. Don't let your insecurity chase you away.

No this was no great achievement in cinema and would certainly never win any awards. But I am a "vacuum cleaner salesman." And it was so accurate it was obscenely funny. Now I have never sold anything for self-pleasure but the idea that it would boost sales to the level they achieved makes me want to consider my own "homemakers little helper." Hey, sex sells. Some of the more accurate statements made: "Negativity: we deny its very existence." And "Hello, my name is (your name here) and I'm POSITIVE!!!! Anyone who has ever done any type of sales job will appreciate the constant bits of hilarity and already know that "nothing is as important as winning a contest!" Cult classic, at least in the sales world.

Being a fellow Michigander (with Jeff Daniels), I can see part of where this movie came from. It's a satirical look at Midwestern family values and sexual mores (like Daniels' other, more well-known, and overall better "Pleasantville"). Unlike "Pleasantville," where the attacks on sexual puritanism are subtle enough for some casual viewers to miss, "Super Sucker" is blatant.

The premise: A down-and-out vacuum cleaner distributor (Daniels) in a moderate-sized Midwest town (based on and shot in Jackson, Michigan) has been given 30 days to outsell his overbearing and obnoxious competitor. Whoever sells the most systems gets sole rights to distributorship. Daniels seems destined to lose -- the competition has much more advertising money, and is willing to throw any rules of fairness out the window -- until he discovers a special use for a long-discontinued attachment. He puts the attachment into rapid production, and offers it as a "special bonus" that only his distributorship has available. His fate changes radically, buildi ng up to a raucous farce of a climax.

The buildup is, in my opinion, slow, and bits are ham-fistedly predictable; the "cat" scene belonged in a Farrelly Brothers movie (and that's not a compliment), but it was thankfully brief. But once it gets going (around the midpoint), and writer/director Daniels decides that whatever real world logic he had been attempting to follow should be thrown out the window in favor of over-the-top absurdity, it has some truly comedic scenes. In a time when Michigan's sexual more pendulum appears to be swinging back to the left, the film is a nice push in the right direction. And, sociosexual politics aside, it's a darn fine piece of unpretentious independent comedy -- something we can never have enough of.

TV buffs will likely enjoy a cameo from Gilligan Island's Dawn Wells, making fun of her own stereotyping as Mary Ann.

Purple Rose fans will note that, except for bits of body-humor comedy and Daniels' affably hapless good guy (a persona he started with "Something Wild"), this is a much different film than Escanaba in Da Moonlight (also a good movie, although I enjoyed the play more). Like "Pleasantville," it has more national appeal ("Escanaba" was rife with Michigan in-jokes), and despite some of its stageplay-like shots, it's obviously based on a screenplay, with many more scenes and a much larger cast. I hope Purple Rose works out its own kinks in distributorship (leaving me wondering if Daniels' frustration here didn't contribute to "Super Sucker"'s premise), because these films deserve a larger audience than they seem to be getting.

I was able to view this film at CineVegas 2002, and I will say it wasn't a waste of time, but I am not sure I would pay to see it again in the theaters.

Jeff Daniels plays a middle class, vacuum sales person who is losing business to his cross-town competitor. Until this point, the movie is pretty, well...boring.

At this point the movie turns to the extreme and becomes pretty funny in a "stupid movie" sort of way--you don't want to laugh but you just can't help it. I will not go any further as I do not want to ruin the film for anyone.

Daniels plays a good role and is funny in it, and if you go into this film not expecting a whole lot, you shouldn't be disappointed.