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List Price: $24.98 | | Label: Hbo Home Video
Salesrank: 26367
Released: March 24, 2009 |
| Our Price: $3.18 |
| Used Price: $1.11 |
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MPAA Rating: Unrated
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
In this hilarious and outrageous, marital arts comedy, Rob Schneider stars as Stan Minton a two bit con man that is found guilty of cheating mostly elderly women out of their retirement saving on fraudulent vacation properties. With the help of his crooked lawyer, Lew Popper (M. Emmet Walsh), Stan is able to postpone his jail sentence for six months in order to tidy up his affairs. Stan quickly goes into a depression that not even his gorgeous and bubbly wife, Mindy (Jennifer Morrison), can pull him out of. However, when Stan receives news from an ex-prison inmate that his frail and weak body will be targeted and "loved" by all of the large men in jail, Stan realized his "tender parts" are on the line and as a last ditch effort he enlists the help of a mysterious martial arts guru know only as The Master (David Carradine). Over the course of the remaining months, The Master transforms Stan into a lean and mean fighting machine much to the dismay of Mindy who cannot see past The Master's other "abilities" such as eating Scorpions at the dinner table and smoking a hundred cigarettes a day. Stan is finally shipped off to jail and he soon realizes that prison is not at all like he imagined it's worse! Thankfully Stan has been trained well and he soon brings the warring gangs together and establishes peace inside the prison walls. This is much to the disgust of the prisons Warden Gasque (Scott Wilson) who has been hatching an evil plan to shut the prison down and sell off the land to a Vietnamese development company that he just so happens to be a silent partner in. Gasque offers Stan a deal that will get him out of prison far ahead of schedule if he'll help him with his diabolical plan. With the clock ticking, Stan must decide between his own freedom and protecting the lives of the inmates that he has grown to respect.
Description of Big Stan:
Big Stan, Rob Schneider’s Kung Fu spoof, is about as hilarious as one can get without some hardcore stunts such those seen in Kung Fu Hustle. Big Stan is Schnieder, starring as Stan Minton, a lowbrow, too-tan real-estate con artist who, in the opening scene, is scamming an elderly woman out of her savings for a fake timeshare. From here, he’s busted and sentenced to prison, and the film’s setting is split between Minton’s gaudy mansion, in which he attempts to toughen up before serving, and a jail ripe with gangs split by race and undersexed men. Stan is a character whose strength and confidence grows throughout the story, initially thanks to the cheerleading of his doormat wife, Mindy (Jennifer Morrison), but mostly because The Master (David Carradine) trains him in a combo martial-arts style that is as absurd as the idea of Carradine chain-smoking while reviving his Shaolin monk persona from the old TV show. Carradine is funny in Big Stan, though it’s Schneider’s timing and slapstick physical comedy that carries the movie. Does he really learn how to break through wood blocks with his middle finger? One may never know. Strange, unlikely plot twists, like one involving prison Warden Gasque (Stan Wilson), are totally corny. But there are sublime moments, such as those when Stan is able to unite warring teams of buff men long enough to perform choreographed dance numbers, that make the whole film worth watching. Gay jokes abound in Big Stan, but not the calloused kind; in fact, the whole film is aimed at portraying a fantasy in which prison is a safe haven for guys of all sorts, a men’s club as pleasant as a spa. It’s a revelry that may never materialize but it never hurts to imagine. --Trinie Dalton
Big Stan Reviews:
for David Carradine 
2009-07-09 - Ok, first off, let me get this clear, I give BIG STAN three stars for the funny and entertaining performance of David Carradine. As for the movie, it's mostly the pits, it's full of unfunny off-putting "humor", lots of prison rape jokes, ha ha. Rob Schneider has never been one of my favorites, and he is no filmmaker, but I also must add, he seems suprisingly competant as a martial artist. Yes, you read that right, the martial arts here are actually pretty good, and I guess, one more reason to see the movie.
The whole reason I even watched this movie was for Carradine, who has a fairly good size role, gets to show off his kung fu, after all he plays the master. DC also gets to show his lighter side with the movie's biggest laughs coming from him, with his training sequences with Schneider perhaps the funniest.
Again, I do want to caution anyone out there, who is not a Carradine fan, or a Schneider either I guess, this is not a good movie. Most of the time, it's not a funny movie, a lot of the time it's just plain dumb. It's also loooooong, a Rob Schneider movie should never exceed ninety minutes, this one is a hundred and five. If I was to grade this one as a real film, I would give it just one star, but Carradine was my favorite actor, and some times we do crazy things for love.
For a truely funny kung fu comedy, see the little known CONFESSIONS OF AN ACTION STAR.
Dopey 
2009-07-03 - This film was not very good or funny. I lost interest 1/2 way through. I'm surprised David Carradine would do this horrible movie.
Hit and miss
2009-06-06 - Rob Schneider's directorial debut Big Stan is a prison comedy that's funnier than say, Let's Go to Prison, but the film as a whole is mostly hit and miss. Schneider stars as Stan, a wealthy scam artist who finds himself sentenced to prison. In an effort to make himself, shall we say inpenetrable, he undertakes martial arts training from The Master (the late, great David Carradine) and thus goes to jail, where he ends up changing things to say the least. Predictable, loaded with gay jokes, and featuring some surprisingly nicely choreographed fight sequences, Big Stan is a worthwhile comedy from the often underrated Schneider, who personally I've always found much better than anything from Adam Sandler. House hottie Jennifer Morrison is on board as Stan's trophy wife, and the great Scott Wilson is here as well as a pretty crooked warden. While it does run a little too long for its own good, Big Stan is enjoyable enough to warrant viewing, but not to the point of hilarity that it could have garnered.
Big Stan 
2009-05-18 - This is one of the funnier movies I have seen this year.I thought this movie would be vulgar (not that I would have been offended)but was suprised that it was pretty mild on vulgar & packed full of funny.I watch a lot of movies & give this one an A+.
Rob Schneider at his best 
2009-04-29 - I liked this Schneider film better than his Animal series and also better than the Gigolo series. I do hate that some of the scenes made it inappropriate for younger kids but overall it's a pretty good and funny film. One surprise and a deviation from other Schneider films was the absence of a cameo by Adam Sandler for it seems that each have a habit of showing up in the other persons films either as a principal actor or in a cameo position. If Adam was worked in I missed it. It was nice to see though that Rob worked in a part for his Mother also.
