The TV Set (2006)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Lorenzo v

  
  <i>"A place where dreams are canceled"</i> The story of a TV pilot as it goes through the Network TV process of casting, production and finally airing. <center><font size=+2 face="Century… More
  <i>"A place where dreams are canceled"</i> The story of a TV pilot as it goes through the Network TV process of casting, production and finally airing. <center><font size=+2 face="Century Schoolbook"><b><u>REVIEW</u></b></font></center> Jake Kasdan's satire, "The TV Set", is a pitch perfect , dead-on depiction of the myopic vision of American television which has become a vast wasteland of so-called 'reality' shows and mean-spirited game shows when in essence, the true pillars of its foundation, the scripted format is on the wane. Never before has a sharp-edged black comedy been needed to poke at the underbelly of the medium than now. The filmmaker cut his teeth on TV including the much critically lauded, hastily dispatched "Freaks & Geeks, that his insider voice is on full display for biting the hand that fed him and for rubbing its ilk in the mess its created. Kasdan layers everything with a touch of stinging wit, caustic dialogue, and unbelievable accuracy of how some people truly are so incredibly dense to the matters of the creative process it's a true wonder how the hell they got so far (let alone dressed themselves in the morning and made the effort at a daily life!) Duchovny's Mike Klein, behind a thatch of itchy/scratchy beard as a mask of indifference to what is thrown at him knowing ultimately he will have to acquiesce at basically every power play and sign his soul away to get his baby on the air; truly soul-crushing to watch one's lifetime dream become a living nightmare. While not a classic like "The Player" or even "Network" the film works on its own merits by not caving in to be likable either; Lenny wouldn't have it any other way.

• paul s

  
  Duchevny is just fine in this role, but Sigorney steals every single scene she's in, getting almost all the laughs in the film. This is well trodden ground, and while it does a reasonable job (recalling the hilarious, short lived, tv show "Action"), I felt that the… More
  Duchevny is just fine in this role, but Sigorney steals every single scene she's in, getting almost all the laughs in the film. This is well trodden ground, and while it does a reasonable job (recalling the hilarious, short lived, tv show "Action"), I felt that the guy cast as the male lead in the tv show was just as over the top as his acting ablility was supposed to be - which was distracting and caused the film to lose momentum and direction. Yes, the guy was supposed to be a moron, but the film shouldn't have been about him, except as a gentle nudge at what the creator (Duchevny) had to deal with. The way in which he hit on his co-star was weak and unnesessary - right out of comedy script 101. Were we supposed to laugh there? Gee, wasn't he "zanny". Nope. Too bad, as there were some tightly written moments, and as absurd as Sigorney's charactor was, she's such a consumate actress that you believed that she believed every word.

• Robert C

  
  I great idea, great cast, just not very well executed. To those of us who feel like network TV is (for the most part) SHIT...this will seem like a very tame (sometimes ammusing) attempt to point out why network TV is so bad. It could have been done in a much more effective and… More
  I great idea, great cast, just not very well executed. To those of us who feel like network TV is (for the most part) SHIT...this will seem like a very tame (sometimes ammusing) attempt to point out why network TV is so bad. It could have been done in a much more effective and "biting" sort of manner. To those who enjoy their reality TV and mundane, cookie-cutter sit-coms, it will mean nothing. I was left feeling that perhaps this film was a victim of the very subject matter they were meant to be parodying.

• Lanning :

  
  One bright star each for Ioan Gruffudd and Judy Greer. In an otherwise plodding look at the compromising of principles in the battle for TV network success, these two actors stand a cut above a very mediocre attempt at telling us something we all already know.

• William D

  
  [font=Trebuchet MS][size=3]The TV Set was very mediocre, almost frighteningly so. What scared me was that it seems to think that it's a smart critique of dumb television and dumb Americans that watch TV. It seems to look down from its perch at TV.[/size][/font] [font=Trebuchet… More
  [font=Trebuchet MS][size=3]The TV Set was very mediocre, almost frighteningly so. What scared me was that it seems to think that it's a smart critique of dumb television and dumb Americans that watch TV. It seems to look down from its perch at TV.[/size][/font] [font=Trebuchet MS][size=3][/size][/font] [img]http://cdn.channel.aol.com/aolmovies/tv-set-david-duchovny-250[/img] [font=Trebuchet MS][size=3]I'm certainly no fan of television. In fact, I don't even own one. But I do watch it when I visit family and friends, and I've seen [u]plenty[/u] of television that is much better than this film. Who does writer and director Jake Kasdan think he's kidding? [/size][/font][font=Trebuchet MS][size=3]Maybe he thought he was doing an ironic, post-modern move of being the thing that he is critiquing, maintaining a double stance of some kind. But I doubt it. I think he is either just not talented enough to bring off his vision, or his vision is average. Probably a little of both.[/size][/font] [font=Trebuchet MS][size=3]Incidentally, when did Jake Kasdan become such a celebrity that the directorial credit should appear smack in the middle of the movie poster and print ads? Is it all because of the Freaks and Geeks TV show? I never saw it. I saw his first film, The Zero Effect, about 10 years ago and thought it deserved more attention than it got. But I didn't think it was a masterpiece by any stretch. Compared to The TV Set, however, it's literature.[/size][/font] [font=Trebuchet MS][size=3]At the start of The TV Set, we meet a scriptwriter, played pretty well by David Duchovny. I liked very much that Duchovny was playing way against his established persona. Here he's disheveled, groggy, unathletic, chubby, bearded, and very un-California. The other characters say numerous times that he's brilliant, but I didn't hear him say one thing that was particularly intelligent. Still it was fun to watch him be surly in la-la land.[/size][/font] [font=Trebuchet MS][size=3]Sigourney Weaver plays his arch-nemesis: the network exec who constantly talks about reaching for "demographics" and wants to test everything with market groups before she releases it. She's the guiding light behind a show called "Slut Wars," which is a smash hit. When her colleague is abandoned by his wife, she looks him in the eyes and says, "Spouses aren't fixtures of the schedule."[/size][/font] [font=Trebuchet MS][size=3]Weaver's lines are by far the funniest. There's a pretty hilarious ongoing bit about the importance of keeping suicide out of TV shows. Weaver does a very good job, but it's nowhere near the devilishly rich performance Meryl Streep gave in a similarly satirical role last year. And Weaver doesn't come close to matching Faye Dunaway's legendary performance as a female network exec in Network.[/size][/font] [font=Trebuchet MS][size=3]We also meet two actors. They're enjoyable, but they're not much more than the standard caricature of the self-absorbed actor. It's funny, I know a lot of actors, and they're never anything like how screenwriters present them. What does that say about screenwriters?[/size][/font] [font=Trebuchet MS][size=3]The central dramatic tension is within Duchovny's character as he tries to decide how much to compromise for his TV show. He wants to be true to "his vision," but he also has a pregnant wife and no other source of income. Wow, that's groundbreaking drama: artist believes in his vision but must feed his children! That's the level of drama we'd see on ... television![/size][/font]

• William G

  
  Amusing satire of television industry simmers instead of stings.

• Kyle S

  
  Wow, this film is severly underrated. Such a spot-on depiction of the television industry. I really felt for and related to Duchovny in a way similar to the way I related to Nicolas Cage playing Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation, which this film is somewhat similar too with the… More
  Wow, this film is severly underrated. Such a spot-on depiction of the television industry. I really felt for and related to Duchovny in a way similar to the way I related to Nicolas Cage playing Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation, which this film is somewhat similar too with the preservation of purity and an artist's vision. Kasdan's best work to date.

• Laurence C

  
  Equal parts funny and alarming, Jake Kasdan's The TV Set hits all the right bases with its one-two punch of merciless writing and across-the-board terrific acting. It's actually much more than just a sharp satire of the dynamics of a television network-- it's a story… More
  Equal parts funny and alarming, Jake Kasdan's The TV Set hits all the right bases with its one-two punch of merciless writing and across-the-board terrific acting. It's actually much more than just a sharp satire of the dynamics of a television network-- it's a story about the everlasting tug o' war between art and commerce, and it speaks about the poor ones lost in-between that try to keep their integrity intact but still have to put food on their tables. At only 87 minutes, Kasdan is still able to develop surprisingly well a good number of his characters while moving things forward at a good pace. His stage direction feels spontaneous but is nevertheless full of well-executed crowd scenes (his finale is a definite winner), and he is able to obtain the most exquisite reaction shots possible. It's notable that the cast he has to work with is extremely gifted (the Duchovny-Weaver-Gruffud central triangle is simply perfect, and the supporting performers do them justice), but it's been quite a while since I saw a director framing his players with the right amount of confidence and communicated apprehension. Plus, the dialogue is just so damn great, and it feels so true coming out of these actor's mouths. Not that The TV Set is gifted with a particularly articulate cinematic language, nor that it avoids all shortcuts a subject like this one might present. But it's full of jokes that range from ha-ha funny to WOW ARE YOU SERIOUS, and it's short enough that you actually feel you might have taken thirty more minutes once it's done. It's a shame this Judd Apatow-produced picture got overlooked during its theatrical release (maybe it was positioned as some potential Oscar grabber and didn't land properly?), but I'll take this very, very good project over most of the boring awards bait films around any day.

• Sunil J

  
  It's okay but I honestly remember nothing about this movie.

• Chosen 7

  
  Good satire on how some crappy TV shows get on the air.

• Marion R

  
  It's the story you are told if you ever want to become a writer in Hollywood. People will alway ruin your work. I had fun watching the movie, but somehow it doesn't seem like a complete story.

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