I don't know that I've ever used the term
"revolting" to describe a film before, but it's certainly
an appropriate application here.
The only bright spot (and believe me, I had
to think long and hard to come up with one), is that I'm confident
that no matter how many bad films I see for the remainder of
my days, I will always be able to look back and say, "well,
at least it wasn't as bad as The Real World Movie."
MTV's The Real World has been a long running
success for the network. Not only do new seasons continually
pull in high ratings, but if the search engine reports for this
site are any clue, the DVDs aren't doing too bad, either.
The Real World sparked the current explosion
of reality television and proved the marketability of doing
little more than simply pointing a camera at people. The genre
even inspired one of the better recent horror films, The Blair
Witch Project.
It's ironic, then, that MTV would take it's
landmark series and bash it with a sledgehammer by trying to
apply a Blair Witch spin to it.
The Channel hyped the movie as a presentation
of a supposed "lost" season. Promos tried to inspire
interest by hinting that something went tragically wrong and
a complete season of The Real World was never aired. In reality,
the lost season was a fabrication.
The film opens like the beginning of every
regular season of The Real World and we are treated to the introduction
of the seven roommates who have been picked to share an apartment.
From the very first character introduction, we can sense that
it's just not right. The dialogue, situations and characters
are too forced.
What's amazing is how poor the writing really
is. There must be thousands of hours of footage that the filmmakers
could have drawn inspiration from, and instead, the opening
scenes play as though no one has ever really watched the show,
and instead only been told about it. Gone are the minutiae of
day-to-day life that make The Real World interesting.
After a few brief scenes of strip poker, the
roommates are shuttled off to what they think will be a challenge
against former Real World roommates. Instead, they are being
kidnapped by a disgruntled fan, Roland (Bryan Kirkwood), who
has constructed his own apartment complex and plans to force
the roommates to play out his fantasy of being on the show.
Roland explains that his apartment is rigged
with explosives so that no one can leave. He further attempts
to solidify his position of power by killing of one of the roommates
-- his explanation is that the show always has seven roomies,
not eight (he, of course, made the eighth roommate).
Now, I wouldn't dream of spoiling the ending
of the film, however contrived it might be. However, when you
are watching a bad film, a film that is excruciatingly dentist
chair bad, it adds insult to injury when the film is too cowardly
to give the payoff it has been promising. The film blatantly
cheats us out of a satisfactory conclusion and instead opts
for the sort of feel good crap that is, to be frank, beneath
MTV's reputation.
The Real World: The Lost Season is billed
as a comedy. It is the worst sort of comedy, where the jokes
aren't funny and the only laughs are decidedly unintentional
ones.
MTV should be ashamed of itself for not only
airing this, but now for regurgitating it up onto DVD.
