Customer Reviews

Ray Stevens Get Serious! [VHS]

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This 1995 video is based on Ray's 1986 song "Dudley Dorite of the Highway Patrol". in the song, Dudley pulls Ray over for speeding (Ray's going 57 and one half miles per hour!). It seems that the characters that Ray has sung about in his songs really exist and they are fighting mad that he has made them a laughing stock. The movie opens up with a camel roaring in a mock of MGM. we see young Ray playing piano seriously...until the woman leaves the room and he starts playing boogie woogie.

Time lapses and we see young Ray at the piano again. His teacher, adult Ray filmed from the stomach down and doing his German accent, demands that he 'get serious! no more of this monkey business!'.

At that junction, we see an ape beating his chest and the first music video appears: "Gitarzan". This home video features ten music videos interwoven with spoken dialogue...sort of like a new twist to a musical. Anyway, cameos by several country comedians make their way into this film. Jerry Clower was more of a supporting player, acting as Ray's manager. In the movie, Ray's record label is bought out by a Japanese conglomerate. Integrity Records has been re-named SoSumi (pronounced "so sue me") and the new label boss is a hilarious parody of Paul Lynde.

The boss wants Ray to get serious and become the Pavorotti of country music and he also wants Chet Atkins to drop the guitar and play the accordion! It's then that Ray is caught in the middle of protesters claiming that his songs are politically incorrect...a group of people sent there by Ray's vindictive new boss at SoSumi Records.

Pushed and shoved in the mob, Ray trips and falls backwards and wakes up in Chattanooga...a prelude into the next music number "The Woogie Boogie". Charlene MacKenzie, Ray's old flame, shows up hard of hearing and doing a great impersonation of Olive Oyl/Betty Boop. Dudley Dorite then attempts to arrest Ray because the cop's been hired by Harv Newland and Sister Bertha to bring Ray into custody for ruining their reputation, as well as the reputations of Ethel, Clyde, and Deputy Coy.

This is a prelude into the music video of "Dudley Dorite". Ray's thrown in cell block 3, a dungeon! Charlene busts Ray out of jail and they hide in the audience of a traveling gospel show, a prelude to the music number "The Dooright Family". Along the way Ray and Charlene hide out at her relatives farm...the home of the world's only Three Legged Chicken.

Soon after, the hilarious label executive and his underlings get into the action by joining in the pursuit of so-called armed and dangerous fugitive Ray Stevens. I can go on and on about this zany comedy musical but I'll close by saying: get this movie if you can. It's hilarious from start to finish. It's clean, wholesome, cornball fun. Available only on VHS as of now. A DVD has never been issued.

Ray Stevens has been an writing and singing great comidic songs for decades, as well as making many of them into comedy music videos.
The main purpose of the movie is to serve as a platform to tie several of these music videos togather. But they went way beyond
what was needed for that. The tie togethers are just as good or better than the comedy music videos.
In the film Ray faces his worst nightmares. His new boss (a guy who does a pretty good imitation of Paul Lynde) wants him to "Get
Serious". But Ray isn`t having any of it. So his new boss sends an army of political correctness protesters after him. Escaping
that nightmare leads to another. He finds that he is being chased down by the characters from his songs who are miffed at being
made laughing stocks.
Stevens plays many characters himself and he has his basic cast of supporting loons that you have seen in his music videos. Plus
a few you would not expect like George Lindsey, Jerry Clower, and Chet Atkins.
There are many music videos included in the film like The Do-right Family, Gitarzan, The Shriners Convention, Ahab the Arab, and
many more. In a way you could say that it`s a musical comedy, but in this case even the music is high comedy.
It`s outstanding comedy and you will not be disappointed.

This perpetually hilarious film by comic genius Stevens is, for the most part, impossible to describe. It has a weird linear quality that is almost nonlinear; yet, the dream-like plot is thoroughly involving, and sometimes as suspenseful as a Hitchcock chase, from the first scene. The humor is broad but brilliant--especially Stevens' merciless take-off on Sigmund Freud, and his one-person parody of a family gospel band (I nearly died!). And the musical numbers alone would be worth the price of the video.

I wasn't expecting a comedy masterpiece, but that's what I got. And I'm not complaining. Why hasn't this guy made more movies?? Buy this!