BEFORE: Well, I started the week with advertising and product placement, and then moved into pop music. What brings those two things together? TV singing contests! Linking from "George Harrison: Living in the Material World", John Cleese (seen briefly in archive footage) was also in "Igor" with Jennifer Coolidge.
THE PLOT: A wildly popular television singing contest captures the country's attention, as the competition looks to be between a young Midwestern gal and a showtunes-loving young Arab man. The President even wants in on the craze, as he signs up for the potential explosive season finale.
AFTER: Ugh, it's tough to know where to begin picking this one apart. It's obviously poking fun at "American Idol", but it has to do so from a distance, probably for legal reasons, so the format of the singing contest had to be changed quite a bit. But this unfortunately also distances it from the thing it's satirizing. They sort of rolled Simon Cowell and Ryan Seacrest up into the same person, who functions as both the host of the show, and its only judge. Did someone think the audience wouldn't be able to follow four characters, as in three judges and a host?
Then they go ahead and throw politics in the mix, with a clueless President (again, a thinly veiled poke at George W. Bush) willing to appear on the season finale (Idol would NEVER mention the finale guests at the start of the season, sorry...) and then terrorism is sprinkled in for good measure, with a sleeper-cell Arab teen who's barely good enough to make the cut and "catch on" with America.
I suppose you could assume that the "Vote For the Worst" movement could be in effect, which helped keep annoying untalented Idol contestants like Sanjaya around for extra weeks, but for the most part horrible Idol contestants are sent packing, so you'd like to think that if the system works properly, a mediocre singer who makes questionable song choices just wouldn't appear on the show for this long.
But, I think I'm probably over-thinking this plot, and giving it too much credit in the end. By making fun of a long-running TV show that has become a parody of itself, most of the shots that land feel like cheap sucker-punches, and the others sort of miss the target completely. What's the takeaway, here? That some people fake their backstories to be on TV? That the President should read the newspaper more often? Terrorism is bad? If you get anywhere near a point, film, please let me know.
NITPICK POINT: A key plot point involves someone looking through a keyhole. But unless that door is in an old mansion, this is just not possible anymore. When was the last time you were able to see into a room this way? Sloppy, sloppy.
Also starring Mandy Moore (last heard in "Tangled"), Dennis Quaid (last seen in "Legion"), Hugh Grant, Willem Dafoe (last heard in "John Carter"), Chris Klein (last seen in "Rollerball"), Sam Golzari, Marcia Gay Harden (last seen in "Miller's Crossing"), Seth Meyers, John Cho (last seen in "Total Recall"), Shoreh Aghdashloo.
RATING: 2 out of 10 dance moves
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