Cynical Cinema

Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing the complete third season of a show called Rob and Big on Tuesday, September 23rd. It’s a show about two mismatched roommates….yep. That’s about it. You see, one’s a big fat black guy. And one’s a skinny little white guy. And they have adventures…only MTV could dream up a show like this. MTV seems to be able to find two people who on their own could be mildly entertaining, and thrust them together in order to make a reality show. But someone who is mildly entertaining when you meet them at the bar does not necessarily warrant his own show. And putting him together with that other guy, who also made you smile a few times when you were drunk? Not a great idea.

But man, it must be sweet to be one of the guys picked up by MTV. Rob & Big appear to have no jobs at all. They don’t work, they don’t have any discernible source of income, yet they live in this giant mansion, complete with outdoor pool and every amenity you could dream of having. They seem to have unlimited funds, with which they can purchase lie detectors, net guns, and whatever other product they need for their next staged wacky adventure.

OK, I now see, upon looking it up on wikipedia, that Rob and Big are actually Rob Dyrdek, who is a professional skateboarder, and Christopher Boykin, his bodyguard. So MTV didn’t meet them in a bar. But that doesn’t make this show any less inexplicable. Are there enough skateboarding fans to watch simply because this guy is a skateboarder? I’m guessing now. It was cancelled after this season.

I’m watching American Mall right now and my brain hurts. My whole body hurts from being so tense in the ball into which I have curled myself. There is no word I could use to describe this movie other than “painful”. This is a film brought to DVD today, August 12th, by Paramount Home Entertainment, who I don’t hold responsible for this, and by the producers of High School Musical, who I DO hold personally responsible for my current state of agony. This travesty to popular culture is referred to as “a 2008 MTV Original Musical Movie”. Which begs the question for me:

Who, exactly, is the MTV target audience? Judging by The Hills and A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila, it is vain, airheaded twenty-something high maintenance bimbos who care more about their hair and their last date than they do the war in Iraq and the state of the environment. That is, if they have heard of Iraq. Or the environment. Judging by Cribs and My Super Sweet Sixteen, it is vain, airheaded seventeen-year-old high maintenance bimbos who care more about the latest shade of nail polish and how cute Zac Efron looked on that Rolling Stone cover than they do about the presidential election or health care policy. Judging by the abundance of Ashlee Simpson and Hilary Duff shows, it’s vain, airheaded 12-year-old high maintenance bimbos who care more about High School Musical and the cute guy who’s friends with their older brother than they do about their grades or any constructive extra-curricular activities.

And judging by The American Mall, their audience is a bunch of bedridden, shallow, airheaded seven-year-old future sluts with the collective IQ of a potato. There is one character in this movie who uses the phrase “wait - backspace!” at least six times. The only movie in the world more idiotic, with a worse message for young girls, is Bratz. The only movie ever made that is more formulaic is Busty Backdoor Babes Volume 112. (Volume 111 actually featured one girl who was NOT a babe - surprise! And that makes it more unexpected and original than this garbage.) And there may not be another movie experience more painful than this one. Well, discounting any movie “starring” Paris Hilton.

The main message of this movie, as I understand it, is that a lovely young girl works at a mall for her lovely young mother. Who looks to be seven years older than her daughter. She has been accepted to university, but she isn’t excited about it, because she wants to be a rock star. And who doesn’t? But she meets a guy - who also wants to be a rock star! Amazing coincidence! And they fall in love! (With him listening to her through a wall, and singing along, and peeping through windows, like an uber-creepy Phantom of the Opera.) But will mom understand that she doesn’t want to go to college? Or that she can become a rock star overnight if the right person just happens to walk by? Will she and her new love form the band that will set the world on fire? OF COURSE THEY WILL.

There are several supporting characters. The star girl’s shallow slutty friends, and the star guy’s lazy stoner friends. Then, there is the Evil Bitch Girl who runs the mall even though she is clearly sixteen years old. Her daddy owns the mall, and she walks over people, and she just wants daddy’s approval and she hates everyone else and she’s so horrible! She’s going to tear the happy couple apart! She’s going to close the good girl’s store! She’s going to…drive me absolutely insane! But she’s not the only one. Every character in this movie is either painfully ordinary or agonizingly irritating. Every scenario is cliched and stupid. And the musical scenes? Enough to make me suffer skin failure.

If you pick up The American Mall, you will be willingly subjecting yourself to the 100 worst minutes on DVD this week. And if your young daughter specifically asks for it, that is great. That will indicate to you that she is already careening down a terrible path, and it’s time to do some serious parenting. She’s headed for almost certain disaster in life, and you might actually have time to stop it. Here’s step one. Don’t let her rent this movie. Rent Brokedown Palace instead and make her watch it. Step two is up to you.

When I started watching the third season of The Hills, out Tuesday July 29th from Paramount Home Entertainment, I really had no idea what it was. The girls from the show were recently on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, but I skipped over the article so I could read an article on how the U.S. has bungled the war in Iraq. It turns out that The Hills is a “reality” show on MTV that centres around two girls, Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag (I know their names from the Doc and Woody Fun Page), that hate each other. I am assuming that had I watched seasons one through two, I would understand why they hate each other. But I didn’t. And I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t wish season one and two and three of this show on anyone. So what we have in season three is two girls who almost never share the screen together, hating each other from afar for an undetermined reason.

They have friends too. Who I guess are a part of the show…also? Audrina Partridge, who lives with Lauren. Whitney Port, who works with Lauren (again, thank you Doc and Woody Fun Page). Spencer something-or-other, who is Heidi’s fiancee. Brody Jenner, who I think appears on another “reality” show about rich and obnoxious bum-kids who live in some rich and obnoxious loser-area. I think it might be called Princess Muscleman And The Eyebrow Tweeze. Or something like that. Whatever. Basically, this show just follows a bunch of rich, highly attractive people around, and spies on their fourth-grade-level friendship and relationship dramas, made all the more dramatic by their fourth-grade-level intellects. This is basically a show about four Paris Hiltons. Which purports to be more than that. But isn’t. I would describe the plot of season three, but it would make me even more insane than I already am. So I will just give you a brief rundown of my day. Watching this.

Episode one - I am wondering how they did the casting for this show. It’s kind of like American Idol, where they put really horrible contestants through to the judges’ round, so they can be mocked on live TV. But in order to get that far, the producers must convince them they’re good enough to get there. The Hills must be similar, because the characters are irritating and dumb. But they think they’re charming and clever. So how do you cast for those people? If you ask someone if they’re irritating, and they say yes, then they are too self-aware to appear on this program. If they say no, they might be OK. But everyone would say no. That must have been an awful long couple of months in central MTV casting. Or maybe they just had a big fat greasy guy and a casting couch. That would actually make a lot of sense.

Episode 4 - with Spencer and Heidi now engaged, how will they manage life? I suppose they will continue to drive around in uber-expensive cars, attend their my-daddy’s-on-the-board joke jobs, and continue to crack wise and say “dude”, a lot. But wait! Spencer has brought home an arcade video game, and Heidi is not impressed. There may be fireworks!

Episode 9 - Lauren and Audrina are going to surprise Brody in Vegas! For his birthday! And the cameras catch every scintillating moment…from inside Brody’s hotel room. Umm….when the producers of this show your friend is on come into your hotel room, don’t you kind of expect that this friend of yours is coming soon as well? And doesn’t that ruin the surprise? Or - wait a second…maybe this show is…staged? Uh-oh. There go many of my illusions.

Episode 12 - Something about New York City. I don’t know. After watching the episode, I checked the episode guide in the DVD case to find out what I just watched, and discovered that I had become functionally illiterate. So please excuse any spelling mistakes that crop up in this review.

Episode 16 - I was excited. Before I lost my ability to read, I saw that this episode had the same title as one of my favourite movies of all time, A Night At The Opera. So I was expecting some Marx Brothers shenanigans, with snappy dialogue and pratfalls. But this did not occur. I was angry.

Episode 21 - Lauren makes friends with Stephanie, the sister of her sworn enemy, Spencer. I wonder what time it is. How long have I been watching this? The clock on the wall has the big hand over the little one, but I’m not sure what that means. I have now apparently lost the ability to tell time. Well, let’s see. If I have now watched 21 episodes, at half an hour each, that means I have been watching The Hills for…eternity? Since Wednesday? I have apparently also lost any ability to do simple math.

Episode 25 - Spencer is gone! Heidi is single again! She wants to regain Lauren’s friendship, but Lauren is cold to the idea. Oh, there has been so much drama, I want to tell you all about it…but I’m confused. There are 25 episodes? Wait - there are more than 25 episodes? What kind of show IS this?

Episode 28 - It’s over! I have watched the last episode of the season! Most TV seasons feature 12 episodes. The ambitious ones feature 16 or maybe even 24. But 28! This sets the bar for all brainless, dumb-bimbo reality shows to follow. Wait a minute. Did I just watch the entire first season of The Hills? In one sitting? How dumb does that make me? Well, try this - I just flipped on Fox News, watched the O’Reilly Factor for six minutes, and Bill O’Reilly was making sense to me! I have now officially regressed to the point where I have a lower IQ than an apple.

The Hills may be the most dangerously addictive show on TV. It’s impossible to turn away, but it’s so bad for you it’s sick. Don’t ever start watching this show. You will be unable to stop, and then you will fall into a horrible downward spiral where you lose all your brain cells, your friends, and your desire to live. Like crack. Or heroin. Or Blue Pepsi. Just say no, kids!

A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila is more than just a TV show. It is a harbinger of doom, the third horseman of the apocalypse, and the moment when pop culture, collectively, jumped the shark. Every single pop culture cliche and every over-the-top idiocy one has ever seen in the media world is crammed into one, giant, staggering pile of crud, repackaged with prostitution and lesbians, and thrown onto the airwaves in an effort to bring civilization, as we know it, to a crashing halt. This show is something that proves to me that the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons of the world are dead wrong. If God created Hurricane Katrina because he was angry about homosexuals and abortions and wanted to warn the residents of the United States to stop their disgusting anti-God ways, the entire country would have sunk into a giant sinkhole of cottage cheese the second this show hit the airwaves.

Tila Tequila, for those of you who are unaware, and I hope for your sake you are, is a functionally illiterate, irritating, fake-boobied, kinda ugly but very skanky “bisexual” midget with the IQ of a pear and the emotional maturity of a glass of apple juice. She is famous. Why? Because of…MySpace! That’s right, she was the girl who got the most friends of all time on MySpace, the internet fake-friend site. Which meant two things. First, she was the one who put up the skankiest pictures on her site without crossing the line into actual porn and nudity and thereby violating the terms of the website. Secondly, she was so irritating and stupid in real life that she had no real friends or a real job. Therefore she had a lot of free time on her hands with which to troll for friends on this website, and that is all she did for two years. MTV calls her a star and recording artist, but this is not quite accurate. In actual fact, she is a prostitute.

Perhaps not a prostitute for money per se, but certainly for attention and celebrity. I know this because she has been payed a lot of money and given a starring role in a show where she is going to have sex with thirty-two different people, women and men, in order to become an even bigger Star. For actually doing nothing except sleeping with people. This is a fantastic form of MTV-sponsored legalized competitive prostitution, with a questionable prize. However, if any of these dating shows has indicated anything to the world, it’s that the prize has absolutely nothing to do with the game. No, it’s the competition that drives people. Everyone must WIN! THAT is why they’re there.

And because most of the people on these shows are complete morons, they start to believe they are actually in love with the person for whom they are competing. Whether that person is Flava Flav, Bret Michaels, or this complete douchebag Tila Tequila. Every element of every crappy show about dating, (The Bachelor, I’m looking at you) is in place for this new low in the history of The Earth, like the big, dramatic music when a Secret Is Revealed, the one-on-one straight-into-the-camera interviews, and especially the cheesy moronic lines, only this time amped up by one thousand. Some examples:

For irony: “This bitch can’t be bought” from the Queen Prostitute herself.

For stupidity: “I’ve never been with an Asian chick before, but I love Chinese food”. This from a testosterone-fueled, muscle-bound, dumber-than-a-cucumber cowboy-hat wearing elementary school teacher?

For more irony: “To be a part of something groundbreaking like this is really an honour” from a lesbian prostitute competing for the heart of a bisexual prostitute. Actually, that does sound kind of groundbreaking, doesn’t it?

Also sticking around from the Bachelors of the world - the Token Object That Represents The Prostitutes Who Are Allowed To Stay On The Show, in this case the key - a heart-shaped key, that is a “key to her heart”. At least the “key” to Toys For Boys actually was a key, and started a motorcycle! The basic premise of this show is that lesbians on one side and heterosexual men on the other side are both competing for a mentally challenged cabbage-patch doll. The real drama in this show comes, then, from the lesbian women who feel betrayed by the bisexuality, and the men who can’t stand the thought of losing a woman to another woman, because their masculine egos can’t take it. However, anyone who watches this show and cares might have a serious personality disorder. Or, at the very least, they will have one by the end of season one, which comes out today courtesy of Paramount Home Entertainment, MTV, and a bunch of crack-addicted sleaze-merchant reality TV writers.