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Dynasty: The Making of a Guilty Pleasure (2005) (TV)

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
And What Else Were You Expecting?, 3 January 2005
Author: Christopher T. Chase (cchase@onebox.com) from Arlington, VA.

Okay, folks, enough caterwauling about the two hours you won't be able to get back because you watched this movie. Don't tell me you didn't see the PREVIEWS? And even if you didn't, COME ONNNN!!! It's a TV movie about a glam-trash series that celebrated the greedy excesses of the Reagan Years, by snatching the torch from another show that did exactly the same thing...except it did it in Texas. We are not talking Shakespeare or Ibsen here. Hell, we're not even talking Harold ROBBINS, for cripes' sake! Yeah, it wasn't juicy enough, or camp enough, or as tongue-in-cheek as it should've been if it were intended to spoof or lighten the behind-the-scenes antics of the actors who starred in it, the producer who launched it (Aaron Spelling), or the writing team who created it (Richard and Esther Shapiro.) But consider this, too, folks: most of the principal cast members are still very much alive, and some of them even get work from time to time. The permission of each and every one of those folks has to be secured before the REAL story can ever be told, and I'm pretty damn sure that not everyone was happy about THAT idea.

So writer/director Michael Miller worked with what he could. Bravo for him, since bits and pieces of the REAL guilty pleasure this movie could have been still manage to shine through in spite of itself.

As is, Bartholomew John couldn't have looked and sounded less like John Forsythe if he tried, but consider whom he's playing. That would've be about like trying to find a look-and-soundalike for Charlton Heston, (who incidentally did appear in the horrid DYNASTY spin-off, THE COLBYS.) The main thing here was to convey the ESSENCE of the personalities involved, and in that case, the actors pretty much succeeded, but none with more success than Melora Walters as Linda Evans, and the ever-so-underrated Alice Krige, as close to Joan Collins as you'll get without employing the services of 'la diva' herself.

Perhaps the 'definitive' expose of what went on behind the glitz and glamour will someday be commended to film. And maybe that won't happen in any of our lifetimes. Till then, there's this, so either deal with it, or as one reviewer already did, flip over a couple of channels to Fox and watch "The O.C." Or if you want REAL trash, stay tuned for "Who's Your Daddy?"

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
There's good trash and there's bad trash. This is bad trash., 3 January 2005

Author: noncentz from Hollywood

While I had enjoyed, in a campy, retro, self-referential way, the behind the scenes looks at Three's Company, Charlie's Angels and Betty Thomas' superior film of this mini-genre, The Late Shift, this ill-conceived piece of mirthless mayhem was just a waste of time. While in those other films the actors had a passing resemblance and sounded similar to those being portrayed, and incidentally seemed to be having a good time with their roles, here everyone just seems lost and miscast.

Alice Krige as Joan Collins comes close. Well, the occasional haircut and shoulder pad hit it on the head as well. Everything about this was wrong. The Rock Hudson AIDS revelation even elicits a viewer chuckle, as "Linda Evans" is told of his illness. "Oh that's silly," she laughs, "he looked fine when he was here. We even had a kissing scene-" Her mouth comically drops open with the realization of what that implies. Poor Linda...she quits the show because an article calls her The Loneliest Woman in Hollywood. soon thereafter there's a knock on her door by her neighbor who asks her to turn down the music. of course, it's musical cheese king Yanni. More chuckles.

Nothing was handled in depth, there were no juicy revelations, there were no moments of "oh, that's how that came to be", and worst of all, almost no mention of TV mainstay Heather Locklear. For a trashy nighttime soap to be presented as garbage is oddly appropriate but the show must have had at least some interesting backstage antics beyond "we need to beat Dallas in the ratings" and "we should sell Dynasty evening wear!"

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Pretty good but lacking, 3 January 2005

Author: Wayne Malin (wwaayynnee51@hotmail.com) from United States

This was being pushed as a sexy camp TV movie. It's not. It's a (purportedly) factual account of how the TV show Dynasty was developed and what eventually killed it. It follows the married producer and writer team of the show--it shows how their lives were affected and why they came up with the more outrageous plot lines (the lily pond fight, the Moldavian massacre, etc.) and the 1991 reunion show that wrapped up everything. There are also a few vicious but funny jabs at the Dynasty spin off The Colbys.

I do like the fact it doesn't ignore the gay fans of the show and on it and Alice Krige is obviously having a whale of a time playing Joan Collins. The most fun out of this comes from seeing unknown actors playing well-known actors! With a few exceptions (Krige especially) they look nothing like the people they're playing! Also it shows all the actors in a positive light--even Collins and Evans are shown as being great friends (no way that's true).

Still, it was not that good. It moved slowly and, on TV, they loaded the commercials during the last hour so it took forever. And I do question how factual this movie is. Still it's fun for a mindless two hours.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
Travesty: The Trashing of a TV Show, 5 January 2005
Author: Poseidon-3 from Cincinnati, OH

In what has now become a genre unto itself (deliberately campy/tacky "behind the scenes" TV movie on the making of a 70's or 80's hit series - see also the ones about "Three's Company" and "Charlie's Angels" to name a few), this one scrapes the bottom of the barrel. A disclaimer at the beginning mentions name changes and time compression in order to account for the less than factual film that follows. They needn't have bothered. Virtually every detail of the film is completely and totally inaccurate!!! Told from the point of view of Esther Shapiro (Reed), the show's conception to it's peak to it's demise is shown through snippets of recreations and backstage squabbles. Reed, though NOTHING physically has been done to make her resemble her character in the slightest, manages to turn in a compelling and interesting performance. She is the sole bright spot of the movie. Singer, as her husband Richard, is also amusing and they stir up a little chemistry together. Hammond, again looking NOTHING like his real life counterpart, does an energetic job of trying to convey Aaron Spelling. Every other actor playing a real-life performer is miscast and horrendously badly acted. John neither sounds nor looks like John Forsythe, airheaded Hardin has nothing whatsoever to do with Linda Evans and, while the hair and clothes occasionally suggest her character, Krige is just plain bad as Joan Collins. None of these actors is portrayed as a human being. They're just cartoon cutouts in dress up. The film was going for a light touch with an intentionally kooky script and tongue firmly in cheek. But when the facts of the real story vary this much from the supposed behind the scenes expose, the whole thing just turns into a mess. To name just a FEW of the inaccuracies: Forsythe would not have been recording "Once upon a time there were three little girls..." in 1980. That voice-over was in the can half a decade earlier. Linda Evans would not have been out in the parking lot as part of a cattle call to read for Krystle. Though hardly a major star, she had more clout than that! In fact, "Dallas" had been touted as "The Linda Evans Project" during preproduction! She was to play Pamela Ewing. Joan Collins was only absent from ONE EPISODE of "Dynasty" during her contract dispute, yet she's shown here watching the show on TV without her. The whole thing was said and done before any new shows aired. Heather Locklear wasn't even AT the Moldavian Wedding, so her scene there is ludicrous. Catherine Oxenberg didn't exit the show in a car crash. Actors are already in costume and on set before they find out their lines? Maybe every so often, but this is treated as commonplace here. The Shapiros were ousted by the last season. There isn't enough space to list everything. The clothes are mostly wrong, the hair is nearly always wrong (Linda NEVER had the golden blonde color that Hardin sports throughout the film, Joan's big wig look didn't kick in until a few years after her arrival) and the whole thing is just garbage. How can there be a movie about "Dynasty" that doesn't even MENTION Fallon, Jeff, Adam or Claudia? Worse than that, the REAL dramas behind the scenes are either ignored fully or glossed over. For example, George Peppard was the first Blake. What happened? Pamela Sue Martin was a major player on the show, but she quit. Why? Linda and Joan both went through at least one divorce during the run. Joan's daughter was nearly killed in an accident with a car. These are just a couple of points. What does this film offer up?? John Forsythe occasionally checked out Heather Locklear's ass? Linda Evans did yoga on set? Joan Collins was self-involved and money-hungry? Wow...... What an expose. A few goofy, funny moments do not make up for this turd of a movie which borders on slander to the real life actors involved. There was already an "E! True Hollywood Story" that revealed far more (even if not a lot) than this. And if anyone should play Joan Collins, it should be Lesley-Anne Down, though she should be glad she had no part in this disaster.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
A basic tvm for die-hard Dynasty fans but probably nobody else, 24 February 2007
Author: bob the moo from Birmingham, UK

With Dallas riding high in the ratings, abc decided to make Forth Worth – a show about a rich family in Texas. Producer Aaron Spelling rejects this project for what it is. Meanwhile husband and wife writing team Esther and Richard Shapiro are trying to their project off the ground; a series about the newly rich and privileged in Regan's America. The two projects get run together and Dynasty is created. Te first season does so-so in the ratings but it is not long before the producers and writers find themselves aiming lower for a bigger audience.

As the title suggests, this is a celebration of the ludicrous television series Dynasty and as such will be of interest to those of us that remember it. This is not to suggest that the film is any good though, because it has tvm writ large across every single scene. A potted history, this film allegedly avoids anything that would see the makers sued (eg the truth) and instead just flows through the making of the series with its various ridiculous twists and turns. The film matches the tone of the series and is all a bit silly and exaggerated. It is all a bit too affectionate though and doesn't have any teeth – seeing the rather insulting methods of winning ratings as daft fun rather than something detrimental to mass media etc. This will probably appeal to fans of the series though and, to be honest, who else will be watching this? The cast are very average. Reed and Singer are both good fun but the majority of the cast are overshadowed by the real people they are portraying. Everyone tries hard but Hardin, Hammond, Krige and John all just mug along with the easy caricatures given to them to work with. Overall then a trashy TVM very loosely based on the broad sweep of a decade of one television show. It entertains in a very basic way but one can't help wonder how it would have been if it tried to do more.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
So Cheesy, it could be labeled "Colby", 19 January 2005
Author: 15231 from United States

After watching the Gilligan's Island, Charlie's Angels and Three's Company exposé/fantasy romps, I really did not expect much when I tuned into this latest exploitation of an old television series. Even with my VERY low expectations, however, the thing still stunk.

This felt like whoever wrote the script decided not to interview or speak with anyone actually affiliated with Dynasty's production; and instead chose just to read some old National Enquirer gossip stories about the show for background, watched only a few episodes of the series (thereby confusing or omitting many major characters) to see what it was about, opted to portray the actors as having the personalities of their television characters, then wrote a trite script of what they imagined might have gone on behind the scenes based upon what they saw in some bad Hollywood cliché movies about television and movie productions. It appears the producers, network, actors, and everyone else involved bought into that thinking as well.

There had to have been a real story somewhere in the history of this television series, but there is no way this could have been it.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Wonderfully campy, 4 January 2005
Author: vchimpanzee from North Carolina

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

At the beginning of the movie, the stars of one of the hottest shows on TV walk into a red carpet event with excited fans on either side. One fan doesn't recognize the man with the beard and has to ask who he is. A writer, the man says. The fan proceeds to announce he's no one.

Oh, how wrong that is!

Four years earlier, TV writer Richard Shapiro is dreaming of writing the next 'I, Claudius'. He and his wife Esther see a group of rich people in a park and wonder about their lives, figuring the people will sue over their inheritance. ABC, meanwhile, needs a hit show. Everyone is wondering who shot J. R., the evil oil magnate on 'Dallas'. The Shapiros realize people want to see TV shows about the rich, and ABC likes the idea but wants Aaron Spelling as a part of the deal. Esther wants to produce the show herself and accepts Spelling's presence reluctantly.

The show goes through a series of titles including 'Fort Worth' and 'Oil'. People aren't interested in cows, so the Fort Worth idea is history. 'Shogun' was popular, and though it was about the Japanese, perhaps the Chinese idea of a 'dynasty' will work.

After a rocky start, partly because the Shapiros want to make a statement when the viewing public just wants the superficial, 'Dynasty' becomes a big hit, and the eventual goal is to beat 'Dallas'.

I was a 'Dallas' fan and only saw a few 'Dynasty' episodes, but I still enjoyed this. Alice Krige made a great witchy Joan Collins. Pamela Reed was very good as Esther, and Ritchie Singer also did a good job as her husband. At first I thought Bartholomew John was realistic as John Forsythe (who I know primarily from 'To Rome with Love' and 'The Powers That Be'), but he seemed cartoonish later on--which was not necessarily a bad thing. Definitely coming across as cartoonish were the actors playing Aaron Spelling and his wife, but I liked them just fine. And Melora Hardin was TOO perky as Linda Evans; I would have said she was better suited for Heather Locklear, except Heather was a lot younger then, and not really perky. Locklear was on screen only briefly, which I thought was a shame. I've enjoyed her performances in 'Spin City' and 'LAX' in recent years, and even though the actress came across as a blonde bimbo, I would have enjoyed more from her.

Hardin showed range later on, as did Krige, in a scene where Joan and Linda were shown to be friends.

I particularly liked the blue-collar couple--she loved the show while he thought it was garbage, but later he was a fan too. As the show's popularity increased, fans from around the country and even the world were shown wearing wigs and clothes like their favorite characters. A Moldavian viewer was quite confused about the depiction of his country.

As with most movies like this, there were many incredible coincidences. Footage of President Ronald Reagan was often shown on TV screens at the ABC offices, and this was footage that likely would have been carried live--it's AMAZING certain events happened exactly when they did. We were advised at the movie's start that fictional events and characters, time compression and composite characters were used. Also shown: Oliver North's testimony on the Iran-Contra scandal and the swearing in of George Herbert Walker Bush. About Iran-Contra: in the days of three networks and little interest in cable, someone got bored with 'Dynasty' and changed channels to find Reagan speaking on that subject. Surely not live. The networks would have all carried the speech.

POSSIBLE SPOILER HERE

Of course all good things must come to an end. 'Dynasty' eventually fell off in popularity, and the show was cancelled. I thought the ending was handled well, even if the reality of the situation wasn't what the parties involved would have preferred. It was funny to hear the theme music of 'seinfeld' as everyone walked off the set for the last time; I guess we know who took over the space.

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A Guilty Pleasure Indeed!, 26 April 2008

Author: einezcrespo from Philippines

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Despite the objection of Dynasty's three main stars this TV movie was actually quite fun. OK so it had it's inaccuracies all but it was all for laughs! The center of the plot is ABC's desire to beat Dallas. Aaron Spelling played by Nicholas Hammond asks to Esther and Richard Shapiro to come up with a drama and presto they bring us Dynasty. Here we relive the era of excess and shoulder pads of the 80's (ah the 80's) as we chortle at the behind the scenes shenanigans. Pamela Reed steals Alige Krige's thunder as the ever optimistic Esther Shapiro. How she ever pulled it off without cracking up I will never know. Ritchie Singer was the perfect foil for Reed as the harassed husband and show writer Richard Shapiro. Krige's Joan Collins/Alexis is sexy and she really nailed her accent and mannerisms. Bartholomew John also did well as John Forsythe/Blake. My favorite line from him was "not the hair!" in fact he had a lot of great lines. Melora Hardin looked overly perky as Linda Evans/Krystle but managed to show vulnerability when confronted by the sight of a tabloid magazine as "the World's Loneliest Woman." The biggest scene stealer's however were "the TV audience," from the regular working class family in the US to the sushi eating Japanese executive and of course the drag queens. The provide buffer for comic relief as time went on. It wasn't all laughs though especially when Esther receives news about the late Rock Hudson's illness and the call of the show's cancellation came through were probably the best and dramatic moments. So was this TV movie really bad? Maybe a little. Hammy? Not really since Dynasty itself was a guilty pleasure even more so then this TV movie.

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What a hoot! The series was tacky and so is this!, 12 January 2007
Author: uniqueabba from United Kingdom

Well well, I loved Dynasty in the 80's, watched it religiously for the ridiculous plot, terrible acting and the fabulous clothes and situations.

It is only fitting that a show about Dynasty should share the campiness of the original!

They certainly made fun of Dynasty, surely this is NOT a serious chronicle as it is so entertaining I am loving every minute!

The actors picked to play the originals are great! And there actually is some really good acting. It must be hard for a real actor to "pretend" to act badly!

Roll on the Dallas remake, and hopefully Dynasty will return to our screen in a film too!

Love it!

Diego UK

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not that bad, 24 April 2006

Author: Michael O'Brien from Australia

Contrary to what some die-hard Dynasty fans may feel, this tele-movie is actually a lot of fun to watch if you lived through the 1980s. OK, it's not completely accurate, but this isn't a documentary. It's an amusing look back at a television phenomenon.

Remember William Goldman's book on writing for Hollywood? His summing-up of the film industry was simply "Nobody knows anything." And here we see it in its fullest flower, with producers and writers literally making it up as they go along.

At one point a character says "Shouldn't we give the viewers what they need rather than finding out what they want and feeding it to them?" The American television industry is affectionately but mercilessly taken apart in this movie and I suspect a lot of people in the industry will squirm with recognition at similar artistic compromises they've made.

But that's much too serious a note to end. I can only say that I found this a fun way to spend two hours. Others may disagree, but I saw every episode of Dynasty and The Colbys that was made, and I enjoyed this movie a lot.

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