As a solid journeyman actor, Jeff Daniels has generated goodwill through memorable performances in The Purple Rose Of Cairo, Something Wild, John Stockwell's excellent TV movie Cheaters, and more. That goodwill dissipated rapidly about 10 minutes into Escanaba In Da Moonlight, Daniels' execrable directorial debut. Though virtually unreleasable, the film was a surprise theatrical hit among Midwesterners, who apparently enjoyed seeing themselves depicted as slack-jawed, dimwitted, flatulence-obsessed yokels. His assault on their dignity continues with Super Sucker, a smutty traveling-salesman joke masquerading as a feature film. Daniels has made much of his movies' Midwestern roots–both Escanaba and Super Sucker were filmed in Michigan with a local cast and crew–but both films do for Midwesterners what Deliverance did for hillbillies. The definition of a one-joke movie, Super Sucker casts writer-director Daniels as a psychotically peppy vacuum-cleaner salesman mired in a long losing streak. Desperate to win a sales contest with a hated rival, he discovers through his wife that an antique vacuum-cleaner attachment does double duty as an aid to self-gratification. Daniels capitalizes on her discovery by manufacturing the discontinued attachment, then selling it to delighted homemakers, much to the chagrin of his rival and a slew of disapproving busybodies. As an actor, Daniels is capable of subtlety and nuance, but neither word seems to be in his filmmaking vocabulary. Super Sucker works in only two modes: over the top and way, way over the top. In both his movies, Daniels-the-filmmaker proves to be Daniels-the-actor's worst enemy: His performance is so stylized, plastic, and campy that he looks and acts like a female drag king. A better filmmaker would set up Super Sucker's premise in the first 15 minutes or so, but Daniels takes 50 minutes to establish the film's one thin gag, then has no idea where to take it, leading to a climax so random and incoherent that it teeters on the brink of abstraction. Aptly titled, this is a comedy that, like its subject, both sucks and blows.