Dynasty: The Making of a Guilty Pleasure

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.

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.

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.

I'm sitting here watching it on PVR and I can't really believe the slapdash nature of the whole thing, but there is one comment I really must make: Alice Krige is a phenomenal actress.

She seems so vivid and ephemeral a talent, that, really, the only time she can knock it out of the ballpark is when she has sufficient makeup and costumes to allow her to, in essence, channel herself.

She looks nothing like Joan Collins, but she is a riot, "doing" Joan Collins. And the last time she registered on the pop culture radar was her unsurpassable performance as the Borg Queen in "Star Trek: First Contact." (Backing up my earlier point.)

This is not a very good movie, and even I, twenty years later, can tell you how badly wrong they got the blocking of the first season finale (a fact, about which the knowledge of, I'm not altogether proud) but Krige OWNS this stupid thing.

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?"