Sometimes when you have some success at what you're doing, you begin to think you can do it all. So you try something different. You become clever. You gain a little too much pride. Vanity takes over.
Such is the case of MTV's "The Real World Movie."
When one is vain and self-serving, any "self-parody" done will never entertain anyone but oneself.
Bunim/Murray, the production company that has been cranking out "Real World" seasons for 11 go-rounds as of the release of this "Lost Season," have decided to mock their own franchise with this television movie that stopped being polite in its first moments, then started getting unreal.
The alleged concept: A group of seven strangers were picked to live in what looked like a lodge in British Columbia. After a couple of weeks of the usual
touchy-feely, shout-in-your-face, I think I'm in L-U-V antics, the house gets a challenge to face a compilation team of "World"ers from previous seasons:
Aneesa from Chicago, Mike from Return to New York, Melissa from New Orleans, Amaya from Hawaii, David from Seattle, Rachel from San Francisco and David from Los Angeles.
A Van pulls up and "Couvers" the cast getting in, but the cameraman was asked by the driver to stay out and off they drove, we're told, never to be seen by
official Real World cameras, again.
After hours of driving, the cast is led by the driver to another elaborately adorned house, except for one thing: no windows. The crew was kidnapped by some maniac who wants to produce his own version of Real World and has rigged the very expensive compound with countless cameras, even button style cams that he forces them to wear on their clothing. Everything has been rigged to explode by a controller he wears on his wrist unless the cast gets it going. What will they do???
The most entertaining scenes in the film were the interactions with the former cast members, basically having their own hostage crisis as they waited to find
out what happened to their opponents. But, face it! They're all RW pros and know how to give the camera what it wants. I would have loved ninety minutes of that. I mean, "loved" in comparison to what we got.
What we got was creepy, meaningless, not fun, not entertaining, not understandable and not worthwhile.
I suppose I could examine all the holes in the plot... like where did kidnapper dude get the cash to build, decorate and wire up the hostage house? And if he had that kind of money, why didn't he just produce his own film?
Or, why did his cameraman buddy go along with his outlandish plot?
None of it made sense.
No fault of the actors, who all at least looked like RW castmates. But the writing was horrendous. Even a Lorne Michaels send up would have been funnier. In fact, SNL did do one! It featured Norm MacDonald playing Bob Dole as one of the kids in the "Chicago" house. Now THAT was a good parody!
