So I don’t know if you fine readers noticed that on
Labor Day here in the States that the Lifetime Channel finally aired their TV
movie The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story. Being that I am a fan and a Saved
by the Bell enthusiast (I’ve seen every episode of show ever from Miss Bliss to
the final episode of the New Class) I took the plunge and watched it.
I’m
going to pull a Roxana Hadadi here and just give you fine folks my top 5 thoughts on the
movie instead of a review.
5. What’s the deal with Mark?
It’s the one thing that really hit me first when watching it
is the actor really only fits Mark-Paul Gosselaar for the first 120 minutes of
the movie. He’s so small! He’s smaller than the actor that plays Dustin
Diamond.
Now while that might fit a lot in the beginning when they are reenacting Good Morning Miss Bliss, for the most part he got a major growth spurts pretty early on and was clearly more of Space Ace than a Dexter. Another thing that stands out is how good he is. Like the movie was trying to make him the opposite of his character Zack but it came off as unrealistic. I don’t think he was a bad kid but he was a teenager that was one of the most famous kid celebrities of that early '90s era. None of that came across. The stuff with his mother was interesting though.
That’s how confused I was when I first turned to it.
The actor that was playing Dennis Haskins was on point with his voice. WOW! I was watching this and was like "well he sure did study this." I wonder if he practiced it a lot. It was one of the only times I was actually impressed with something in this movie. The Peter Engel character was portrayed really well, almost too well in regard to how nice he was and forward thinking about live action shows for tweens (a term not around then). He was like the Steve Jobs of Saturday mornings in this movie always knowing things that were good in comparison to the blonde exec lady that was always negative and kind of racist in the casting scenes. As I said earlier the character of Mark-Paul's mom was interesting and could’ve gotten more screen time.
Now while that might fit a lot in the beginning when they are reenacting Good Morning Miss Bliss, for the most part he got a major growth spurts pretty early on and was clearly more of Space Ace than a Dexter. Another thing that stands out is how good he is. Like the movie was trying to make him the opposite of his character Zack but it came off as unrealistic. I don’t think he was a bad kid but he was a teenager that was one of the most famous kid celebrities of that early '90s era. None of that came across. The stuff with his mother was interesting though.
4. Where in the world is Slater’s perm at?
Now while the actor Julian Works clearly mastered the way in
which Mario Lopez said “preppy” in ways in
which I could never achieve but the costuming department failed him and the viewer
by not giving him his uber curly mullet of dancing and wrestling power!
3. Jesse and Kelly…
While I’m talking about hair they completely dropped the
ball on these young actresses' hair. It wasn't big enough at all. I don’t know
what you need or if they needed to hit up a Goodwill or yard sale for all
the hair care stuff to get that 1990 volume but they didn’t do it. It was like
looking at some half-assed Kelly and Jesse Cosplay.
For a second I thought the
young lady portraying Tiffani Thiessen was playing Leah Remini aka the Queen of
Queens better known in Saved by the Bell lore as Stacy Carosi.
That’s how confused I was when I first turned to it.
2. The adults were ok.
The actor that was playing Dennis Haskins was on point with his voice. WOW! I was watching this and was like "well he sure did study this." I wonder if he practiced it a lot. It was one of the only times I was actually impressed with something in this movie. The Peter Engel character was portrayed really well, almost too well in regard to how nice he was and forward thinking about live action shows for tweens (a term not around then). He was like the Steve Jobs of Saturday mornings in this movie always knowing things that were good in comparison to the blonde exec lady that was always negative and kind of racist in the casting scenes. As I said earlier the character of Mark-Paul's mom was interesting and could’ve gotten more screen time.
1. Really Screech?
Yeah I know this is kind of based on Dustin Diamond’s book
that he wrote (and then kind of disavowed) when he was salty at the world. I
know that Diamond is a producer on the movie. Yet I felt some type of
way when he called TIME OUT during the movie. With so much focus on the Diamond character it feels like this movie really isn’t about the making of the show
and the kids that worked on it, but rather a dramatic mirror world reboot of the show with Screech as the protagonist instead of Zack. It’s also weird that the actors’ looks never change when they clearly
changed so much over those 4 years.
I could talk about the little mention
of Tori's (played by Leanna Creel) addition to the cast or the fact that they didn’t go into The College Years for the ending or the fact that Diamond played Screech for SEVEN MORE
YEARS. Nor did it mention how Peter Engel basically got control over NBC's Saturday morning after Saved by the Bell exploded, giving him the power to make a ton of shows (the best being California Dreams the real
voices of Zack Attack, no one can tell me different). But nope it just ends at
the graduation episode that ended regular Saved by the Bell. This movie didn’t show you any
dark stuff or scandalous events or anything that would make it worthy of being Unauthorized. It was just like a long Saved by the
Bell clip show episode. But hey all these things can’t be the VH1
TLC movie now can they.
