Series 7: The Contenders (2001)

Series 7: The Contenders The best part of watching people kill each other on TV is betting on who the winner will be.By the way, the returning champ in this dark comedy is not a sure bet.If Dawn (Brooke Smith) survives the next round of the kill-or-be-killed reality show The Contenders, her and her unborn baby will go free.However, included in the other 5 random contestants is Dawn's ailing ex-boyfriend (Glenn Fitzgerald) who wants her to be the one who terminates him.Meanwhile, the other contestants accumulate weapons and begin stalking the title-holder.Things get worse when Dawn goes into labor.Narrated by Will Arnett, this 2001 satire of the-then fledgling genre is told entirely through reality camera lens - a method that can be comical and constrictive on the narrative.Fortunately, the violence and soundtrack help round the edges.Incidentally, if contestants sang while killing, this show would be even bigger.Yellow Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

There are very few films that would ever be improved by being more like a comic book fanboy, but Series 7 is one of those films. The premise of this movie is that it is actually a marathon showing of back-to-back episodes of a reality TV show called The Contenders. Except this show isn't about boxers or Muy Thai fighters. In this show, 6 people are given guns and told the winner is the last one left alive. TV camera crews follow each Contender around as they kill each other off. The reigning champion in this 7th season of the show is Dawn (Brooke Smith), a very pregnant woman who has already killed her way through two previous seasons and 10 people. Now Dawn's been brought back to her hometown to square off against 5 final opponents; Connie (Marylouise Burke) - a nurse who takes to killing like a duck to water, Tony (Michael Kaycheck) - a drug addicted Guido who decides he doesn't want to play the game, Franklin (Richard Venture) - an old crank who has coated the inside of his mobile home with lead foil, Lindsay (Angelina Philips) - a teenager with the world's stupidest parents and Jeffrey (Glenn Fitzgerald) - Dawn's old boyfriend who is dying of cancer and is married, even though he's really gay. These 6 people fight and don't fight, kill and don't kill, all while a smarmy narrator teases the audience with their eventual fates. Clearly, Series 7 is meant as a black comedy take on the reality TV genre and it does a decent job of mimicking the conventions of the genre. There are confessional moments where the characters talk directly into the camera. The show is constantly building up to big moments and then cutting away from them to stretch the suspense out as long as possible. There are even a couple of good bits where they are obviously mocking the way reality TV show producers edit these shows together to manipulate the audience into thinking and feeling certain ways about the people in the show. But the basic problem of Series 7 is that it doesn't take itself seriously enough. Being too serious is usually bad for any movie, especially a black comedy, but this story needed to be thought out a lot more. That brings in the comic book fanboy. I am one, so I can speak from experience. We take our comics very seriously. Not only can we rattle off ridiculous bits of trivia, but we actually sit around and think about stuff like…who would win in a fight between Werewolf by Night and Vixen from the Justice League. We try and figure out how Iron Man's boot jets would work in real life. We try and explain why Modok doesn't kill Captain America when he has him tied up and at the big giant head's mercy. We don't just enjoy out comics, we enjoy coming up with our own explanations for how the things in comics could and would actually happen. Series 7, however, doesn't spend any time at all thinking about that stuff. It establishes that people are chosen by lottery to participate in The Contenders, but that's where the background information ends. I t's never explained who is running the show. It's never explained how a show like this exists. It's never explained what these people are playing for, other than their lives. I t's never even really explained how the game works. Imagine watching an episode of Survivor where no one ever explained to you that the players can win immunity by doing certain things. The way the contestants behave wouldn't make much sense, would it?Series 7 doesn't bother to think about how a murderous reality show would have to be set up. It just has these people being followed around by camera crews wearing bullet proof vests, but that doesn't make any sense. There'd be camera guys getting shot left and right, both deliberately and accidentally. A reality TV show about people killing each other would have to be different in certain ways than The Amazing Race or Big Brother, but this script never bothers to wonder about any of that. That lack of intelligence or care undermines the whole film. The actors all do a decent job, but the script puts them in situations and behave in ways that don't make any sense because the script never bothers to consider how a show like this would work in real life. Series 7 was made when reality TV was still a newish genre. Perhaps back then, you could more appreciate the satire because how a reality show worked was less certain and less well understood. Today, though, we know so much about what reality TV is and how it's made that it's hard not notice that Series 7 is rather lazily put together.

the people who came up with this are SICK AND TWISTED FREAKS how the hell can you exploit people like this? tricking people into thinking that this is real? which i probably don't doubt that it is... i saw this thing for the very first time today series 7 and it made me sick to my stomach i almost threw up. i just couldn't stop crying my eyes out for these poor people and if that woman really did have that baby you SHOULD ALL BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELVES!!!!!!!!!! i have a 4 month old daughter and it is just absolutely appalling that would put a "real" pregnant woman in SO MUCH FRICKEN DANGER! you people are bloody ANIMALS and should be locked up for life allowing something like this to put on t.v. if this so called "reallity show" is for real then why isn't anyone being put in prison for allowing people to die and not doing a god damn thing about it. YOU ALL DESERVE TO BE FRIGGEN HUNTED DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Despite the potentially fascinating premise, Series 7 is weak attempt at attacking reality television. Aside from its bargain basement production values, which present an eyesore 10 minutes in, the overall tone of the film is misguided. Several reviewers have attacked the acting in the film, but I think the real problem is this lame attempt to make the film into a farce. Aside from the fact that the jokes are not funny (a pregnant woman swears a lot, a young girl gets a bunch of guns), it doesn't gel with the overall tone of the film. Had the makers actually made Series 7 to bear a striking resemblance to actual reality TV-colorful yet hollow edits, lame sound effects, sweeping camera motions-maybe their point would have been more solid or at least more palatable. Instead Series 7 meanders through the already harried world of death and game show. You can just imagine the director slapping himself on the back for stating the obvious