Dynasty: The Making of a Guilty Pleasure

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.

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.

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.

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?"

I was watching this film with great interest. Dynasty was one of my favorite programs growing up in the decadent 1980's. I was anticipating watching this film because I really liked Dynasty. However, the acting was awful. I couldn't remembered most of the story lines myself. I didn't remember that Alexis was suppose to be queen of Moldavia. Alice Kreig did a great job portraying Joan Collins. She got her mannerisms down to a t. The show Dynasty downfall was back in 1988 (towards the end of its run.) The country was going into a different direction at the end of the Dynasty run which is why middle America wasn't too interested in the show anymore. Dynasty was a social commentary of the Reagan years. It was a show of pure escape at the time.