Created
By Mary-Ellis Burnim and Jonathan Murray
Feature
length: 86 minutes
Extras:
Behind-The-Scenes Featurette and Cast Bios
Languages:
English Dolby Stereo
Subtitles:
N/A
Packaging:
Amaray Keep Case
Chapter
Stops: 8
Sound:
Dolby Stereo Sound
Year
of DVD Release: 2003
Home
Video Distributor: Paramount Home Entertainment
MPAA
Rating: Not Rated
Reviewer:
Mark A. Rivera
Perhaps
inspired by genre films that are meant to look as if they are “real” such as
“The Last Broadcast” and “The Blair Witch Project” comes “The Real
World Movie: The Lost Season.” The premise has the seven strangers picked to
live in a loft in Vancouver and as everyone knows by now, the personalities
chosen are usually meant to represent a broad spectrum of 18 to twenty-something
youth with this selection composed of the stereotypical thick-skulled frat boy,
the closet homosexual, the feminist law student, the self-absorbed drama queen,
the guy from nowhere, and the wide-eyed virgin. The second rule to reality TV is
once you have cast your players and seen to it that they are different and
strong willed enough to cause friction living together and create drama, you
have to send them on some reckless challenge that forces them to work as a team
for a prize. The cast of “The Real World Vancouver” is supposed to go up
against some alumni from different seasons to compete for a cash price of fifty
thousand dollars to be split seven ways by the winning team.
The
cast has no idea about what the challenge will be and so they are picked up a
half an hour early one morning by two young guys claiming to be MTV “Real
World” employees and driven to a remote location where they find themselves
trapped within the ultimate “Real World” loft. However unlike previous
“Real World” settings, this loft is equipped with explosives so that unless
the cast does exactly what their obsessed fan tells them, they will find their
spot on the show cancelled and their lives forfeit.
Shot
on both film and video, this is the inevitable result of any TV show that lasts
more than ten years, which is self-parody. This not a comedy and I wouldn’t
call it a horror film either although the premise is frightening. After so many
spoiled and mugging would-be celebrities, these are actors pretending not to be
actors and the results are not perfect, but compelling enough to watch and see
how everything is resolved. This MTV title distributed by Paramount Home
Entertainment presents “The Real World Movie: The Lost Season” in a (1.33:1)
aspect ratio with the filmed segments appearing in a (1.78:1) letterboxed aspect
ratio and the videotaped segments alternating between (1.33:1) and (1.78:1)
letterboxed as well. A loud English Dolby Stereo Soundtrack is provided, but
there are no captions or subtitles encoded on to this DVD at all.
Character
bios and a short behind-the-scenes featurette (4:55) are the only bonus features
included. The main menu features full motion animation while the subsequent
menus are standard interactive still frames and all are easy to navigate. “The
Real World Movie: The Lost Season: MTV’s DVD-Video Collection” will debut on
Tuesday, January 28, 2003 from Paramount Home Entertainment.
©
Copyright 2003 by Mark A. Rivera
All Rights Reserved.