The TV Set (2007)

best movie i've ever seen.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

POSSIBLE SMALL SPOILER -- I have to say, parts of this movie sort of dragged for me. I watched it again a while later, and actually wound up fast-forwarding through a few of the scenes with David Duchovny. It wasn't him, especially, it was more the writing, the scenes he was in, it just seemed to slow down the movie. But I want to say -- and this is my reason for writing this review at all -- I've never been a huge fan of Sigourney Weaver. I thought she was okay, just okay, in "Ghost Busters." I sort of liked her in "Alien." But in this movie, to me she is brilliant. She makes the movie. When she's on screen the movie is wonderful. I don't know her (unfortunately), I've never met her (I'd be nervous), so she's a total stranger to me, but I could watch her scenes in this movie over and over and over again, she's that good! The movie itself is another of these "they totally fu--ked up my film" movies (see, "The Big Picture," e.g.). But, despite the fact that I guess you're supposed to hate her character for ruining poor David's TV pilot, she's marvelous. I read somewhere that originally the character ("Lenny") was supposed to have been a guy -- whoever decided to make it Sigourney Weaver is a genius. P.S. Since this is supposed to be a review -- a TV writer (David Duchovny) finally writes a pilot that has a chance, but the execs change his basic premise to make it entertaining, and he's very depressed, The End. Forget that. Laugh out loud at the satire. And applaud Sigourney Weaver's incredibly smart and wonderful (and probably totally accurate) TV exec of all TV execs. B-minus for the movie, A-plus-plus-plus for Signourney Weaver!!!

The TV Set wants to tell us what's wrong with television, but the tone and substance of the film never rises above a snarky whine.The story follows a writer (David Duchovny) who's trying to sell his show to a network. Things start in a conference room full of suits, deciding who's going to star in the show, moves through shooting the pilot and concludes at the grand unveiling of the network's new schedule in front of a convention hall full of network affiliates. Writer/Director Jake Hasdan thinks he's showing us how talented people end up making terrible shows, but he's not fair and honest enough to do that.Hasdan wants people to see David Duchovny as this talented guy with a great script battling to protect it from self-indulgent actors and directors and a network executive (Sigourney Weaver) who is relentlessly trying to dumb the show down and tear out its creative soul. The problem is that while we see a lot of terrible changes made to it, we never get to see the supposedly great show being butchered. It's a sitcom that we're told is smart and funny and touching, but we never get to see any of the smart, funny stuff and the touching scenes we see are straight out of a daytime soap opera. The movie is essentially a scam that wants to make fun of all the stupid, nonsensical stuff that happens to create bad TV without showing us what good TV actually is. It never rises much above mildly amusing because the punch lines are almost all based on the contrast between the silly and shallow ideas of the network executives and the smart and worthwhile ideas of the writer. But since we never get to see the writer's great ideas, the contrast is weak and so is the humor.I must say, if Weaver's performance is at all close to the real thing, you do get a sense of sympathy for people in television. She's got no real taste at all and relies on her teenage daughter to tell her what's good, but is entirely convinced that things should be done her way and holds the success and failure of others completely in her own hands. The TV Set portrays working in television like it's living in a totalitarian state, where standing up against the powers that be requires heroic courage and a willingness to suffer.The film also comes at the good TV vs. bad TV from another perspective. Ione Gruffud plays a former BBC executive who's been hired by the network to improve the quality of their shows. The movie briefly uses him to embody a different approach to television, one with more high-minded goals and more respect for the creative process. But he soon knuckles under and goes along with Weaver's crude, lowest-common-denominator style and the movie never really explains why.That's because the story scrupulously avoids examining the true root of all TV evil…money. Why do network executives make so many idiotic suggestions and force writers and producers to accept them? It's because creating a television show is hugely expensive and overwhelmingly ends in failure. A network might introduce 10 or 12 new shows a year, each costing millions of dollars an episode. Yet, if the network is lucky, one and only one show might be a hit and maybe another one or two will grab enough audience to barely keep them on the air. The rest are quickly canceled and all the money spent on them is wasted, like it was shoveled into a hole or used to light someone's cigar. Kasdan never comes close to confronting this basic equation - enormous amount of money spent + huge likelihood of failure = a desperate compulsion to do anything that might increase the chance of success to the slightest degree.Without acknowledging that basic truth, Kasdan can't really tell the story he thinks he wants to tell. What's he's created is a mild satire that's neither dark enough or truthful enough to appeal to anyone who doesn't work in television and hasn't experienced the process firsthand.The film does also focus on the young actors who get cast to star in Duchovny's show and tries to show the pressures put on them and how it can turn them into not very pleasant people but again, it's not funny or sharp enough unless you've personally witnessed that sort of metamorphosis.The TV Set is a movie about television, but you get the sense that if Kasdan had been more successful in television (and Duchovny had been more successful in movies) that it would never have been made. This is filmmaking in lieu of therapy.

OK, this wasn't the worst movie I have ever seen, but it was far from one of the better ones. I did not emphazise with the lead character, or even the supporting characters - and kept asking myself why this exec guy McCallister and his wife got so much attention. What was the point? The only one I felt for to some degree was Alice, you could literally feel the stress she's under for having to negotiate between the writer and the network guys, always pretending it's not all that bad and everything is hunky-dory.The story line seemed to go nowhere. From the beginning I expected the things to happen that did happen, but I kept waiting for a twist, a punchline, SOMETHING. No need to say, it did not come.What really bugged me, though: I did not think that Mike's original material was all that good. It tried to be really deep, I guess, what with the brother's suicide, but from what I saw in the movie, it would have been just as lame. So I just couldn't feel any regret for the producer's walking all over the writer and the pilot. If at some point I would have seen something really good, I probably would have felt differently.If you want to spend time with an unoffensive so-called comedy that will not really surprise you or make you laugh, go see this movie. On the other hand, there are lots of funnier, more powerful movies out there...

I readily related to the central plight of David Duchovny's character - writing and submitting what we're to assume is a perfectly good, heartfelt and sincere script only to be asked to compromise it's most significant and defining characteristics in ways that change the entire premise of the story. With real world responsibilities, he's forced to choose between his ability to provide for his family and his artistic integrity. I think we've all been there in one way or another - those REAL compromises in life where either option requires us to face a devastating loss.This movie was emotionally stirring as well as funny - a troubling funny, a dark funny, where the real laughs are in the subtext - the absurdity of the whole ordeal.David Duchovny's performance was, imo, perfect. I actually prefer him in more overt comedic roles but he owned this character in all it's deadpan glory.I think the most surprising performances were from Judy Greer and Sigourney Weaver. I knew Judy did good comedy, but the subtle approach she applied to this character was flawless. Like Duchovny, she was funny without ever seeming like she was actually trying to be. She didn't play the character funny, she played a funny character - if that makes sense to anyone but me.Weaver, unfortunately, lands on the other end of the spectrum - as the most disappointing performance. She appeared almost desperate for a laugh in most scenes and her character never seemed to have center. Then again, people in Weaver's character's position tend to be over-animated, two-dimensional, self-ingratiating twits with no artistic vision. So, perhaps she played her character perfectly. Decide for yourself.Extra props to Fran Kranz for his brilliant portrayal of a slightly psychotic bad actor, Ioan Gruffudd for being so damned likable as opposed to the typical "stuffy brit" stereotype found in most American movies...and finally, Justine Bateman and Willie Garson for breathing real life into their relatively small roles. Well done...Bottom line: This movie touched me. I don't think we can ask for any more from our entertainment than that.