Remember the heyday of syndicated TV back in the late 1980s and early 1990s? You had your Small Wonders and your PM Magazines and even your attempts at starting primetime earlier with your She’s the Sheriffs. Those were glorious, heady times.
One of the staples of this syndicated landscape was the movie review show, At the Movies, Siskel and Ebert, Sneak Previews, the list goes on. But those days are gone–thanks in part to online social media. Two months ago, At the Movies got its walking papers (its last show will be in August), and it would seem like the final nail has been hammered into the genre’s coffin.
Except that there’s still a movie review show out there that you’re probably not watching. Which is a shame, because it’s smart and funny and puts most of its contemporaries to shame.
I’m talking about The Rotten Tomatoes Show on Current. As the title indicates, the show is connected with the Rotten Tomatoes website and uses the aggregated ratings from that site to supplement user-generated video reviews of recent films. In between the reviews are rotating features, such as Top 5, where actors pick their five favorite films; the Anticipatron, which checks out trailers; and Screenplay Cliché, which spotlights screenwriter crutches with a montage of movie clips.
That description doesn’t make the program sound very inventive, but what makes it work is its sharp writing and the personalities of its hosts. Brett Erlich and Ellen Fox have a nice chemistry that doesn’t rely on forced patter or phony hostility. Erlich’s charm is that he can play smart and self-effacing without coming off as either smug or whiny. And although Fox looks like she escaped from G4‘s central casting for hosts, she isn’t served up as a sexual salt lick for the male audience the way Olivia Munn and Morgan Webb are on that network. Fox has an acid wit that is all the more biting because–like Erlich–she’s not afraid to show off her braininess.
As for the writing, check out this clip that shows it’s possible to make a three-minute bit informative, accurate and hilarious.
New episodes of The Rotten Tomatoes Show air at 9:30 p.m. (10:30 p.m. Eastern) with repeats throughout the week. Tonight’s show features a change to the format as viewer reviews are ditched in order to focus on movies that open that Friday. Personally, those reviews are the weakest element of the show, and if their dismissal means more screen time for Erlich and Fox, I won’t have any complaints.
Joe Vince
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