Stuck on You

To be honest, I don’t usually go out of my way to see movies that set themselves up as comedy.

Maybe I was scarred as a teenager by too many sequels in the Police Academy and Naked Gun series to expect much when they’re out for laughs. I might just be one of the grumpy old men (no pun intended!), but a lot of it is really just a choice between dumb and dumber (pun intended!). I wouldn’t say that Stuck on you is on a higher plane of existence, but I must admit it was a lot of fun!
Walt and Bob Tenor are conjoined twins, around 30 years old, who are a loved part of their small town.They work the kitchen of the local fast-food joint with amazing speed. Despite sharing the same liver, they excel in every sport they attempt.
The story picks up as Walt decides to go after his dream of being in a movie. This proves to be their biggest challenge yet, but before long they’re rubbing shoulders with the stars (as well as each other). Watch out for a cameo appearance by Adventism’s favourite son, Ben Carson, with some dry, doctor’s humour of his own!
It’s easy to criticise a comedy that focuses on people with disabilities. But Stuck on you encouraged the audience to look past what might be obvious, to understand the person inside the body.
It might not exactly be walking a mile in the other person’s moccasins—perhaps more like sitting for 90 minutes in the other person’s cinema seat. But this has been a conscious effort by the director: “For our movies to work, audiences must care about the characters.”
This sounds like life imitating life—for life on our planet to work, all of us must care about all the other characters. That’s all lovely and sentimental, and easy, when you’re sitting in a comfy seat watching a movie. It’s another thing altogether when it goes fully interactive.
Too often our laughter is at the expense of others, especially at the expense of those who are different. But that might mean we simply don’t understand who we’re dealing with.
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. . . . It is immortals who we joke with, work with, marry, snob and exploit. . . . This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is in fact the merriest kind) which exists between people who have from the outset taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption,” writes C S Lewis in The Weight of Glory.
It doesn’t matter if the difference is physical, racial, religious, political or cultural. When we respect and care for people who are different from us, we can share our abundant life, with all its joy, merriment and comedy.