In the vein of Kingpin, Office Space and Airplane. Super Sucker isn't as funny as any of those movies but, considering it's budget, is still pretty impressive. Fans of "dumb" comedies will probably like, not love, this move.

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.

This is the worst film to come along since "Dude, Where's my Car?" It has a funny premise but it doesn't handle it well. This is an extremely silly movie, but I don't mean that in a good way. It is too silly and stupid to be funny. Don't waste your time or money on this one.

I saw Super Sucker at Madstone Theaters in Ann Arbor. While I was generally pleased with the movie, I found it to be forced in places, as if the actors were trying too hard to make the joke work. I was expecting a movie a la "Tin Men" or even "Glengarry Glen Ross". Low key, but with Daniels' brand of humor. Instead, "Super Sucker" is an over-the-top, farcical movie about sexually unsatisfied residents of a medium-sized city using a new vacuum cleaner "attachment" in the pursuit of pleasure. I think the intent of the movie was to preach a sexual liberation, anti-prude message, if Fred Barlow's (played by Daniels) "sermon" at the end is any indication. If that was the intent, the movie fell short of doing it well. I feel sly humor and innuendo, like that found in the beginning of the movie, would have played much better, but instead we were treated to sexual vaudeville, with biker mamas, cross dressers, and dirty old men cheering and marching. I'm certainly no prude, but I think the movie would have been much better leaving something up to the imagination instead of blasting us in the face with it. Kudos to: Daniels and the lesser known actors he chose for the film who really helped sell the film, the fact that the movie was shot 100% on location close to home in Jackson, MI, good character development, and the few scenes with truly sly, sarcastic humor. I would have liked more conflict between Barlow and the other vacuum cleaner distributor (played by Harve Presnell, an actor I love to watch), and more Dawn Wells, because unlike Howard Butterworth in the movie (played beautifully by Matt Letscher), I am a Marianne man all the way. Michigan residents should see the movie for sure, little kids shouldn't see it at all, and everyone else should see it if they're looking for a fairly predictable plot with comedy and farce, too few instances of well-done wit and satire, but want some chuckles and laughs from a movie targeted to adults instead of the Kangaroo Jack crowd.