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Grey Gardens
You could say the 1975 film Grey Gardens and the BBC's 1974 documentary The Family were ahead of their time, given it was a documentary in the reality genre that is so prominent today. Equally, you could also say it was the beginning of an abomination for the Media Industry that saw the likes of The Only Way Is Essex and Made In Chelsea emerge onto the scene. My stance is on the latter and I really don't understand why this film became such an inspiration for terrible reality television shows.
The film follows the lives of eccentric old mother Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie, who live together in a rundown mansion in New York. I say 'eccentric' but it's not really the fun kind of 'eccentric', it's just the pair doing a lot of weird things that don't really make sense. You can tell the director Ellen Hovde is trying to manipulate the footage so we think 'OMG, they're so funny' but it just doesn't work and it feels like the poor ladies are being exploited for entertainment when they may need medical attention for their odd behaviour. Maybe they even have a mental disability of some sort that affects their behaviour? I'm not entirely sure shoving a camera in their faces was right to do.
It's not even like the material is interesting. The entire film is boring because nothing really happens and I'm not sure why I should care about these two over other people they could have filmed. It's not even like they seem representative of the film's audience; they're too lost in their own world for that. They're simply a poor choice of subjects; personally I would rather have seen the life of Ellen Hovde; it would have been a lot more interesting to watch a film director's day-to-day life working on the production of a feature-length film. In fact, that would make for a much better ITV reality series than the dreadful Only Way Is Essex. ITV, if you are reading this and you decide to use my idea: I want royalties.
The biggest crime this film makes is going on for too long. There's one hour and thirty four minutes of this ****; during that running length, you're lucky if you don't fall asleep. The film feels dragged out over this running length and it would have worked better as a one hour one-off television special. I don't even know why you'd decide to make this a movie.
Ever wanted to see a Don't Tell The Bride film?
No?
Thought not.
There's a reason why reality shows aren't feature films and that's because they're tacky, cheap to produce content that really don't hold up as movies. The only exception is I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here!, which I absolutely love and is certainly not cheap given the use of Ant & Dec as presenters and the Bushtucker Trials. Even I'm A Celebrity wouldn't work as a film though, unless they adapted it into an original screenplay about Chris Pratt taking on snakes in an underground coffin whilst trying to earn meals in an apocalyptic wasteland ruled by Ant & Dec. By which point, it has somewhat deviated from the source material of the TV series.
Overall, Grey Gardens is boring reality trash that wrongfully exposes its subjects for the sake of entertainment when they may have a mental disability which influences their odd behaviour. This abomination should never have been a film. There's a reason why 'I'm A Celebrity...The Movie' doesn't exist and that's because reality television does not lend itself to the movie format. If you desperately need sleep, then watch this movie. Otherwise, stay awake and don't bother.
You could say the 1975 film Grey Gardens and the BBC's 1974 documentary The Family were ahead of their time, given it was a documentary in the reality genre that is so prominent today. Equally, you could also say it was the beginning of an abomination for the Media Industry that saw the likes of The Only Way Is Essex and Made In Chelsea emerge onto the scene. My stance is on the latter and I really don't understand why this film became such an inspiration for terrible reality television shows.
The film follows the lives of eccentric old mother Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie, who live together in a rundown mansion in New York. I say 'eccentric' but it's not really the fun kind of 'eccentric', it's just the pair doing a lot of weird things that don't really make sense. You can tell the director Ellen Hovde is trying to manipulate the footage so we think 'OMG, they're so funny' but it just doesn't work and it feels like the poor ladies are being exploited for entertainment when they may need medical attention for their odd behaviour. Maybe they even have a mental disability of some sort that affects their behaviour? I'm not entirely sure shoving a camera in their faces was right to do.
It's not even like the material is interesting. The entire film is boring because nothing really happens and I'm not sure why I should care about these two over other people they could have filmed. It's not even like they seem representative of the film's audience; they're too lost in their own world for that. They're simply a poor choice of subjects; personally I would rather have seen the life of Ellen Hovde; it would have been a lot more interesting to watch a film director's day-to-day life working on the production of a feature-length film. In fact, that would make for a much better ITV reality series than the dreadful Only Way Is Essex. ITV, if you are reading this and you decide to use my idea: I want royalties.
The biggest crime this film makes is going on for too long. There's one hour and thirty four minutes of this ****; during that running length, you're lucky if you don't fall asleep. The film feels dragged out over this running length and it would have worked better as a one hour one-off television special. I don't even know why you'd decide to make this a movie.
Ever wanted to see a Don't Tell The Bride film?
No?
Thought not.
There's a reason why reality shows aren't feature films and that's because they're tacky, cheap to produce content that really don't hold up as movies. The only exception is I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here!, which I absolutely love and is certainly not cheap given the use of Ant & Dec as presenters and the Bushtucker Trials. Even I'm A Celebrity wouldn't work as a film though, unless they adapted it into an original screenplay about Chris Pratt taking on snakes in an underground coffin whilst trying to earn meals in an apocalyptic wasteland ruled by Ant & Dec. By which point, it has somewhat deviated from the source material of the TV series.
Overall, Grey Gardens is boring reality trash that wrongfully exposes its subjects for the sake of entertainment when they may have a mental disability which influences their odd behaviour. This abomination should never have been a film. There's a reason why 'I'm A Celebrity...The Movie' doesn't exist and that's because reality television does not lend itself to the movie format. If you desperately need sleep, then watch this movie. Otherwise, stay awake and don't bother.