Cinecultist wishes to apologize for the lateness of this Monday posting -- our Dreamhost servers were down all day today, hence the AWOLness of all the Cinecultist-y content you know and love. We'd planned on posting a real barrel scraping entry about I Want to Marry Ryan Banks, a ABC Family channel movie about reality tv CC had found ourselves inadvertently watching from start to finish. CC has long resisted the siren call of reality tv, even mocking Survivor and American Idol to the face of huge fans even blatantly dissing Meredith the Bachelorette when we saw here in 7A on late Saturday/early Sunday, so why the hell were we watching this fictional narrative account of the making of some Bachelor rip off?
Why, for the love of all that is good and holy, why? Because the Cinecultist likes a challenge. Our mission -- to watch an irredeemably bad Made For TV movie every day this week, preferably on less than premium cable, and write about it. Will our eyes fall out from the insult, our brain ooze out our ears from the lowering of our I.Q., or our sides split from the laughing at the stupidity? Surely.
There's something sort of fascinating about aging, former hunklet Jason Priestley and his valiant efforts to be more than the guy who was Brandon Walsh. Here he "turns his goodie two shoes persona on its head" by playing the womanizing actor Ryan Banks whose career needs the boost only image-happy reality tv can offer. Nice guy Will from Alias, Bradley Cooper plays his best friend and manager Tod Doherty who concocts the whole reality tv scenario to deal with Ryan's philandering but in the process falls for one of the contestants, Charlie (Emma Caulfield).
Even the names of the characters scream bad tv movie -- cool girl Charlie with masculine tom-boyish name, and Tod freakin' Doherty which sounds like one of the boyfriends from the Sweet Valley High series. But the oddest thing about this little film was not the dry heave reflex CC experienced every time we had to watch that cheesy "key ceremony" in the two hours, but the sense of deja 90210 vu watching Jason and Emma on screen together. Oh yeah, that's right before Emma was Anya "I Hate Bunnies" on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she was brunette Susan Keats, nerdy college newspaper editor and uptight girlfriend to Brandon! That's what Cinecultist really looks for in our Made For TV movies, correlations to Beverly Hills, 90210 plots.
Dear readers, what travesty will CC watch next? Only our digital cable remote knows.
Posted by karen at March 29, 2004 11:16 PM