Stuart Saves His Family

Stuart Smalley has a program on public access cable. To make money, Stuart waits tables, but his new healthy lifestyle interferes with his ability to simply do his job. Smiling all the time, he tries to give unwanted advice. The viewer learns he is a waiter while he is goofing off talking about life with his pretty and successful friend Julia. Not a romantic friend, but a very nice person who does a lot to help Stuart throughout the movie. She always has time for her friend, even with her big shot job, and she knows so many people who can help him out of his jams. Stuart is mistreated by his boss, who banishes him to late night and upsets his fans, though the boss won't reveal this fact. Others do that later. But Stuart has a more immediate concern: his beloved aunt has died and he must go home to attend the funeral and help mediate the battles between family members. For one thing, a cousin demands to use the family plot where the aunt would have been buried, showing up at the cemetery with cops after being ignored earlier. Later, it is determined that the aunt's house was built partly on a grumpy old man's land. And the grumpy old man wants a lot of money for it. And thanks to Stuart's bumbling, now he wants even more money. So Stuart may have to lie in court. He's too good a person to do that, or is he? Stuart's show is loved. And a cable network wants to make 20 episodes. It will take four hours to film them all. How Stuart got to this point involves some illegal actions and the firing of a receptionist who appears in his most memorable episode. Another crisis: Stuart's dad has always had a serious drinking problem. It's time to finally do something about it.