Two struggling, desperate-for-success TV writers partner with a porn promoter to create a shocking reality show involving cannibalism and a desert island. Struggling sitcom writers Dave Roberts and Gil S. Ripley are urged by their manager to focus on reality programming. After being spurned by one network after another, they start to pitch increasingly outrageous concepts, finally hooking up with Kevin "K.B." Blatt, the promoter behind the Paris Hilton sex tape. Blatt enthusiastically bankrolls
the Darwinian American Cannibal, a show that originated as an absurd example of how far reality TV could be pushed. Contestants on this show are starved on a desert island for days and then scared with hints of cannibalism. The drama behind the actual documentary stems from its exploration of the two writers' moral evolution: while Roberts turns giddy at the prospect of a hit show, Ripley grows increasingly disillusioned. When one of the contestants becomes critically injured, Roberts beats himself up on camera, and both he and Ripley bail on the project. The inescapable irony is that Roberts and Ripley have now inadvertently become stars of their own reality show.
Reality television is painful enough to watch at home, let alone on the big screen, but directors Perry Grebin and Michael Nigro somehow didn't get the message.
What's here is a glimpse not into how far people will go to win a reality-TV show, but how far greedy writers and producers will go to degrade, debauch and enrich themselves.
Reality TV has rarely cared much about truth -- and maybe this is the doc it deserves. The crass truthiness here is far more apt than any of the glossy satire in American Dreamz.
This excitable expose has all the makings of a sensationalized spoof. Only problem is, there's nothing funny about what happens here - not intentionally or vicariously.
If there's one thing to be learned from American Cannibal, it's this: Pursuing a career in the TV industry is only for those with a superhuman tolerance for sleazy opportunism.
American Cannibal is ostensibly about the phony, exploitative nature of reality TV, and though documentarians Perry Grebin and Michael Nigro hit that point too hard by piling up interviews with TV experts who speak in exaggerated cautionary tones,
"American Cannibal" is a fast-paced satire about the state reality television that builds its humor on its depiction of the limits our current reality TV craze.
Interesting knowing that it was going to eventually fall apart. Who doesn't like to watch a train wreck happen?! It was alright.
June 13, 2008
Dee Loren
Somewhat interesting story of two writers trying to get a reality television show off the ground, but it somehow falters the further into the film you get. I'm not sure what we're supposed to glean from the ending of the film, as the shows' production is plagued from the start, but it was an interesting way to wast an
hour and a half.Give it a look on cable, like I did.
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