El magnate

Hilarious movie reminiscent of Mad TV and SNL mock TV shows. First saw this on cable in the 80s and fell off my chair laughing. This is the kind of stuff Danny Devito does best. Dark, sarcastic humor.

Struggling producer Vic de Salvo (Devito) hatches a scheme to become a big TV star by creating and staring in his own shows and selling them to a struggling network. When he meets and falls in love with Francine, (Rhea Perlman) a woman who works for the Neilson Ratings Beaureau, he uses her knowledge to kidnap the Neilson families and send his mobster crew to "house-sit" for them and tune into his shows.

The mock shows are hilarious and I swear some of them are actually templates for shows that were minor hits later on. This reminds me a little of "Stay Tuned". Well worth a look, though slightly dated. Future "Cheers" stars, Perlman and George Wendt and an early look at Michael Richards ("Seinfeld"'s Kramer).

THE RATINGS GAME is one of the funniest and well written movies of all time. Its the TV industry making fun of itself. The plot is unique and clever, the love story with DeVito and Perlman is very well done and touching, and there are cameos by many great stars and stars to be. Basically its a spoof of really bad sit-coms where the lead character fraudulently manipulates the ratings to make his patently bad show beat the World Series in ratings. Brilliant movie, probably not easy to find. There are very few comedies that get me. This one is side-splitting and a real bulls-eye insightful satire of the Hollywood TV industry and scene. Bravo.

It's fun to see each person do their best. None of the acting is bad. The story is a little, well, seeing it once is good enough. I watched it while I was doing some of the work and we enjoyed a couple bits. I'm much happier that I watched it then if I didn't.

"The Ratings Game" is the first made for Showtime film and it's an over-the-top film...the sort that might make you laugh but also is pretty dopey.

Vic (Danny DeVito) is a rich guy who has dreams of being a TV producer. But he's also a talentless clod who doesn't know the first thing about making TV shows. Not surprisingly, again and again he's rejected by the networks because his ideas are, frankly, terrible. However, when a network exec is fired, he okays a TV pilot starring Vic....mostly out of a desire for revenge.

As for Vic, he's a guy who comes up with a scheme. It seems his girlfriend (Rhea Perlman) works for Computron...a Nielsen-type service that monitors TV viewing for the networks. Using her inside information, Vic and his associates track down a hundred of these families whose viewing is monitored. He arranges for these families all to have a free cruise...during which time, Vic's men break into the familys' homes and watch Vic's show....giving it incredibly high ratings despite the show being crude and stupid. But the problem is that when the show is a hit, the network wants to buy the show and make Vic a star....so this means keeping these unfortunate families on an extended cruise! What's next? See the film.

The acting in this one is very broad as is the writing. It's funny and insightful while ALSO being rather dopey. My daughter watched it with me and hated it. I thought that despite everything, it is cute and worth seeing....but I do agree the film was a bit stupid.

This satire on the TV industry is too much of it, with mountains of cheesy plot-driven dialog set to the accompaniment of hyper-cheesy music. But mixed in are some great gags--one of the best is a sight gag, when Gerrit Graham walks back on stage at the MBC confab, to continue plumping his network's new shows against a devilishly appropriate freeze-frame from one of them. Much of the value now is to have fun seeing all kinds of talent before, between, or after the high points of their careers. Casting wise, this show could pick 'em.

The strongest element here is the apt satire. Alas, the laughs are not frequent enough, or intense enough, to really sustain the effort. The movie in the end is a cheese dog, but the stars play it cute, and it's fun. Five stars for wide and deep star power, far transcending the script.