Lotus666
06-08-09, 09:12 PM
This one was contributed by Nick Zbu in 2004...
Way back when, back when Jerry Springer was on during the mornings here in Michigan, there was rumors of a movie. A movie based on a talk show that many claimed revolutionized the Talk Show into something else than the housewife 'fix-your-house and please-your-man' role. In reality, it was just the beginning of Jerry Springer-as-cash-cow. In the late '90s Springer was a hot property. It seems odd to think that a little over five years later after many of the shows that followed him into the void of tasteless programming are either gone or living life in a late-night slot that Springer, himself now here in the Detroit market as a 1:35-2:35 entity.
The question I asked myself at the time was 'how the hell could Springer make himself and his show into a movie?' My answer? Tell us about his life. Surely there must be a story in how a Holocaust survivor who was born in England and immigrated to America only to become one of Cincinnati's youngest city council members and disgraced mayor overcame his political shame to get a talk show, then decide to go the trash route under the hand of a producer who used to write for the World Weekly News when it came close to being shitcanned. Now that's a story!
But no. That story was saved for a very few pages of Jerry Springer's auto/biography that can now be found in hardcover form in your finest Canadian dollar store bins. Okay, then maybe the movie was an uncut episode of Jerry Springer. That would make money: if the version on TV is cut up to remove all the swearing, nudity, and violence, then an uncut episode--while nauseating--would be a draw.
Nope. Then what?
And hence we come to this particular movie.
Ringmaster is a bastard son of a thousand maniacs. On one hand, it wants to be a subtle satire of Springer's life. On the other, it seems to want to put a face on the people who come onto the show to make money off of being truly ****ed up. Or maybe it's a mean-spirited comedy/drama in which we simply mock the retards on the show for being downtrodden and stupid..which is indeed an odd thing for a Jewish immigrant directly affected by the Nazi invasion to say, much less make a movie about.
So what is this movie about? Well, on the surface, a mother and daughter who sleep with the same men out of vengeance and go on the show and are happy about this. Also about a black man and his black girlfriend who are really into cheating and comeuppance and how these two stories relate to each other and.....oh, forget it. The plot of this movie is that the plot is stupid: if you want to hear it, it's essentially two Springer episodes that mesh together in a sensual manner and all that cheating and backstabbing and love squabbles that it involves. And on top of it all, we see Springer intermeshed either trying to make a point that has more holes in it than swiss cheese or him singing in a country western bar.
So what does this all mean? Is it more confusing than an episode of Twin Peaks?
Not really. At its heart, this movie tries to have its cake and ice cream together: it wants to show that the reason Springer takes simple people and idiots and gives them airtime is because if rich people can air out their differences and disgusting personal lives, why can't the poor and disenfrachised? The show is there to give them that time. Yet the people behind the show definitely have a strong feeling that these people who make asses themselves on the show are inferior. While they claim to be doing these people a service, at the heart they are exploiting them and wrecking their lives not only for profit, but also to gain some sort of superiority over these people. Yes, they work on a talk show, but they're not slutting it up on TV..they're better because they're not trailer trash, they're the ones who are putting the trailer trash on the air! It's a very odd logic from, once again, a Jewish immigrant who escaped the Nazi Invasion in order to somehow use the Nazi logic of superiority for his own gain. You would think that Springer would be aware of this irony and possibly tone down any blatant mention of it (much less in a feature film), but it's hard to ignore this fact during the last part of the movie in which Springer, surrounded by his audience, boasts of being able to air out his 'guests' dirty laundry on TV. Yeah, Jerry, you are giving them a forum in which to do whatever they want...but who directly benefits? Not the people you pay only for the flight here. How can one be a 'protector of the people' and benefit from them at the same time? Hypocrisy, perhaps?
But if this was the only problem with Ringmaster, I would be satisfied. Instead, we have a gestault entity of a movie that also wants to be a slice of life of the people who 'star' on the show and an example of Springer's life. The sum is not equal to the parts. When reviewing a film on a deep level, you try to find some reasoning behind why the movie exists. Does it entertain? Does it inform? Does it have some internal logic that leads the viewer through a sequence of events that is somehow worth their time? And somehow Ringmaster fails at all of these. On one hand, you could have a fascinating look into the mind of a possibly idealistic man who wanted to do good for mankind who now arguably can be considered just the opposite. Or you could have an idea into the mentality of several thousand Americans who volunteer to air their dirty laundry to the public for unknown reasons. Instead, the only idea you get about Springer and his show is that this movie was a big paycheck and they decided to do whatever the hell they wanted to do. Just film what you wanted to do and hope the director can throw a movie around it. There is no internal logic or any intent of this movie except to make money off a cash cow and be done with it. Yet, in the paragraph above, you do get a true idea of what lies behind the Springer crew through I don't think they realize even today.
If you have to reserve pity for anybody in this cinematic abortion of a picture, it's the actors. Or more specifically, Molly Hagan, the white trash mother and ex-Herman's Head alumni (she played Herman's sensitivity) who has the most humilating role in movie history. Without going too much into it, she went from a fairly good Chuck Norris movie playing the perpetual victim to this movie where not only does she give oral sex, she actually provides the slurping noises for it. So if you have any sympathy for anybody, it's definitely this poor woman who just wanted a paycheck and got sucked up into this flick. If I were kinder, I'd save some pity for Jaime Pressly but she's made a name doing a few '90s teen flicks and now does things such as Karate Dog, Death to the Supermodels, and what appears to be a movie based on the life of Evel Knievel. Ouch.
BOTTOM LINE: Just now I remember doing a review when I rented the DVD that said 'not even the director could find anything to say about this film.' And neither can I. In fact, I think it's only value lies in being a curio of a different time when the only thing we had to worry about was the decline of moral values as it relates to people doing stupid shit on TV for fleeting fame and a few corny remarks by the just-as-trashy studio audience. Outside of that, the only remarkable things that stick out this point in time is 'how could Springer ignore how Nazi his leanings are' and 'who the **** gave foley noise for a ****ing blowjob??'
Rated Half a Suck Out of Four Sucks, and that's because I refuse to give Springer the satisfaction of knowing his movie was damned awful and since it seems somebody lit this thing so, unfortunately, we could see what was happening.
Way back when, back when Jerry Springer was on during the mornings here in Michigan, there was rumors of a movie. A movie based on a talk show that many claimed revolutionized the Talk Show into something else than the housewife 'fix-your-house and please-your-man' role. In reality, it was just the beginning of Jerry Springer-as-cash-cow. In the late '90s Springer was a hot property. It seems odd to think that a little over five years later after many of the shows that followed him into the void of tasteless programming are either gone or living life in a late-night slot that Springer, himself now here in the Detroit market as a 1:35-2:35 entity.
The question I asked myself at the time was 'how the hell could Springer make himself and his show into a movie?' My answer? Tell us about his life. Surely there must be a story in how a Holocaust survivor who was born in England and immigrated to America only to become one of Cincinnati's youngest city council members and disgraced mayor overcame his political shame to get a talk show, then decide to go the trash route under the hand of a producer who used to write for the World Weekly News when it came close to being shitcanned. Now that's a story!
But no. That story was saved for a very few pages of Jerry Springer's auto/biography that can now be found in hardcover form in your finest Canadian dollar store bins. Okay, then maybe the movie was an uncut episode of Jerry Springer. That would make money: if the version on TV is cut up to remove all the swearing, nudity, and violence, then an uncut episode--while nauseating--would be a draw.
Nope. Then what?
And hence we come to this particular movie.
Ringmaster is a bastard son of a thousand maniacs. On one hand, it wants to be a subtle satire of Springer's life. On the other, it seems to want to put a face on the people who come onto the show to make money off of being truly ****ed up. Or maybe it's a mean-spirited comedy/drama in which we simply mock the retards on the show for being downtrodden and stupid..which is indeed an odd thing for a Jewish immigrant directly affected by the Nazi invasion to say, much less make a movie about.
So what is this movie about? Well, on the surface, a mother and daughter who sleep with the same men out of vengeance and go on the show and are happy about this. Also about a black man and his black girlfriend who are really into cheating and comeuppance and how these two stories relate to each other and.....oh, forget it. The plot of this movie is that the plot is stupid: if you want to hear it, it's essentially two Springer episodes that mesh together in a sensual manner and all that cheating and backstabbing and love squabbles that it involves. And on top of it all, we see Springer intermeshed either trying to make a point that has more holes in it than swiss cheese or him singing in a country western bar.
So what does this all mean? Is it more confusing than an episode of Twin Peaks?
Not really. At its heart, this movie tries to have its cake and ice cream together: it wants to show that the reason Springer takes simple people and idiots and gives them airtime is because if rich people can air out their differences and disgusting personal lives, why can't the poor and disenfrachised? The show is there to give them that time. Yet the people behind the show definitely have a strong feeling that these people who make asses themselves on the show are inferior. While they claim to be doing these people a service, at the heart they are exploiting them and wrecking their lives not only for profit, but also to gain some sort of superiority over these people. Yes, they work on a talk show, but they're not slutting it up on TV..they're better because they're not trailer trash, they're the ones who are putting the trailer trash on the air! It's a very odd logic from, once again, a Jewish immigrant who escaped the Nazi Invasion in order to somehow use the Nazi logic of superiority for his own gain. You would think that Springer would be aware of this irony and possibly tone down any blatant mention of it (much less in a feature film), but it's hard to ignore this fact during the last part of the movie in which Springer, surrounded by his audience, boasts of being able to air out his 'guests' dirty laundry on TV. Yeah, Jerry, you are giving them a forum in which to do whatever they want...but who directly benefits? Not the people you pay only for the flight here. How can one be a 'protector of the people' and benefit from them at the same time? Hypocrisy, perhaps?
But if this was the only problem with Ringmaster, I would be satisfied. Instead, we have a gestault entity of a movie that also wants to be a slice of life of the people who 'star' on the show and an example of Springer's life. The sum is not equal to the parts. When reviewing a film on a deep level, you try to find some reasoning behind why the movie exists. Does it entertain? Does it inform? Does it have some internal logic that leads the viewer through a sequence of events that is somehow worth their time? And somehow Ringmaster fails at all of these. On one hand, you could have a fascinating look into the mind of a possibly idealistic man who wanted to do good for mankind who now arguably can be considered just the opposite. Or you could have an idea into the mentality of several thousand Americans who volunteer to air their dirty laundry to the public for unknown reasons. Instead, the only idea you get about Springer and his show is that this movie was a big paycheck and they decided to do whatever the hell they wanted to do. Just film what you wanted to do and hope the director can throw a movie around it. There is no internal logic or any intent of this movie except to make money off a cash cow and be done with it. Yet, in the paragraph above, you do get a true idea of what lies behind the Springer crew through I don't think they realize even today.
If you have to reserve pity for anybody in this cinematic abortion of a picture, it's the actors. Or more specifically, Molly Hagan, the white trash mother and ex-Herman's Head alumni (she played Herman's sensitivity) who has the most humilating role in movie history. Without going too much into it, she went from a fairly good Chuck Norris movie playing the perpetual victim to this movie where not only does she give oral sex, she actually provides the slurping noises for it. So if you have any sympathy for anybody, it's definitely this poor woman who just wanted a paycheck and got sucked up into this flick. If I were kinder, I'd save some pity for Jaime Pressly but she's made a name doing a few '90s teen flicks and now does things such as Karate Dog, Death to the Supermodels, and what appears to be a movie based on the life of Evel Knievel. Ouch.
BOTTOM LINE: Just now I remember doing a review when I rented the DVD that said 'not even the director could find anything to say about this film.' And neither can I. In fact, I think it's only value lies in being a curio of a different time when the only thing we had to worry about was the decline of moral values as it relates to people doing stupid shit on TV for fleeting fame and a few corny remarks by the just-as-trashy studio audience. Outside of that, the only remarkable things that stick out this point in time is 'how could Springer ignore how Nazi his leanings are' and 'who the **** gave foley noise for a ****ing blowjob??'
Rated Half a Suck Out of Four Sucks, and that's because I refuse to give Springer the satisfaction of knowing his movie was damned awful and since it seems somebody lit this thing so, unfortunately, we could see what was happening.