Retro Television Review: Veronica’s Video 1.1 “Pilot”

Posted on April 18, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Veronica’s Video, which was produced by UPN in 1998. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!

I sacrificed my eyesight to review this show.

Episode 1.1 “Pilot”

(Dir by Don Scardino, originally aired on …. well, we’ll get to that.)

Aspiring filmmaker Gary Gluckin (Matt Champagne) needs a day job so he walks into a trashy, nearly deserted video store and tells the owner, Nick (Cobin Bernsen), that he wants to work for him. Nick is an angry man who chain smokes and rolls around in a wheelchair because his wife ran him over while she was leaving him. Nick is also Gary’s father.

Nick is only willing to hire on a Gary probationary basis and he explains that Gary will be competing for a full time job with Chandra (Shishir Kurup), a Sikh who is an expert on Indian films. Gary and Nick make fun of Chandra’s ethnicity, religion, and name. Chandra, meanwhile, enforces a strict policy of only allowing 21 year-olds into the porn section of the video store. He kicks out a 51 year-old. That’s the type of show this was.

Occasionally dropping by the video store is Mary Sue Henderson (Julie Benz) who works for her grandmother and who wears an Alice In Wonderland costume that Gary is constantly looking down. Mary Sue is always bright and cheerful. When she talks to Gary, Gary goes all mush-mouthed because Gary is a loser. Gary also thinks that he may have seen Mary Sue’s picture on the cover of one of the porn videos that is in the store.

Nick eventually tortures Gary by forcing him to stand outside in 116-degree heat. At one point, Greg gets beaten up by someone who is played by Greg Grunberg. Frustrated, Gary announces that he doesn’t need the job and he’ll just move in with his mother. Nick replies that Gary’s mother wants nothing to do with him. Wow, what a fun comedy.

This is, without a doubt, one of the worst shows that I’ve ever watched. This show was so bad that the pilot didn’t even get a pity showing. UPN, which was famous for being the home for terrible and misguided shows, didn’t even want to mess with this thing. Why is this show so bad? The humor is not particularly funny, the laugh track in intrusive, and the video store itself is so dirty and ugly that it’s hard to believe that it has ever had a customer. Corbin Bernsen, being a veteran actor, at least manages to suggest that there’s a heart underneath Nick’s rough exterior. The rest of the cast is just bland.

I should also admit that I watched this on YouTube and the upload was one of the worst that I’ve ever seen. I’m surprised I still have my eyesight after being confronted with this:

And this:

I had 20/60 eyesight when I started this show. I’m worried about what it is now.

Anyway, needless to say, only one episode of Veronica’s Video was produced. And that episode probably should have been left in a landfill somewhere, rather than uploaded to YouTube.

Back to School Part II #37: Can’t Hardly Wait (dir by Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont)

Posted on September 14, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oddly enough, the late 90s and early 2000s saw a lot of movies about teenagers that all had strangely generic names. She’s All That, Down To You, Drive Me Crazy, Head Over Heels, Get Over It, Bring It On … the list is endless.

And then you have the 1998 graduation party-themed Can’t Hardly Wait. Can’t Hardly Wait has such a generic name that, when you first hear it, you could be forgiven for naturally assuming that it stars Freddie Prinze, Jr. Of course, if you’ve actually seen the film, you know that it features almost everyone but Freddie Prinze, Jr. This is one of those films where even the smallest roles are played by a recognizable face. In fact, there’s so many familiar actors in this film that a good deal of them go uncredited. Jenna Elfman, Breckin Meyer, Melissa Joan Hart, Jerry O’Connell, and Amber Benson may not show up in the credits but they’re all in the film. In fact, you could argue that Melissa John Hart, playing an impossibly excited girl who is obsessed with getting everyone to sign her yearbook, and Breckin Meyer, playing an overly sensitive lead singer, provide the film with some of its comedic highlights.

(That said, perhaps the most credible cameo comes from Jerry O’Connell. He plays a former high school jock who ruefully talks about how he can’t get laid in high school. He’s so convincingly sleazy and full of self-pity that you find yourself wondering if maybe O’Connell was just playing himself. Maybe he just stumbled drunkenly onto the set one day and started talking to anyone who would listen…)

Can’t Hardly Wait takes place at one huge high school graduation party, which is actually a pretty smart idea. The best part of every teen movie is the party scene so why not make just make the entire movie about the party? Almost every member of the graduating class is at this party and we get to see all of the usual types. There’s the stoners, the jocks, the nerds, and the sarcastic kids who go to parties specifically so they can tell everyone how much they hate going to parties. Eric Balfour shows up as a hippie. Jason Segel eats a watermelon in the corner. Sara Rue’s in the kitchen, complaining about how everyone’s a sheep. Jamie Pressly drinks and assures her best friend that she’s at least as pretty as Gwynneth Paltrow. (“And you’ve got way bigger boobs!” she adds, encouragingly.) Outside, Selma Blair frowns as someone hits on her with bad line.

Of course, Mike Dexter (Peter Facinelli) and Amanda Beckett (Jennifer Love Hewitt) are the main topic of conversation at the party. For four years, Mike and Amanda were the school’s power couple but Mike decides to dump Amanda right before they graduate. Mike feels that he’s going to have a great time in college and he doesn’t need any old high school commitments holding him down. His best friends all agree to dump their girlfriends too. Mike spends the party watching, in horror, as all of his friends go back on their promise. Amanda, meanwhile, wanders around and wonders who she is now that she’s no longer Mike Dexter’s girlfriend.

Preston Meyers (Ethan Embry) struggles to work up the courage to tell Amanda that he’s had a crush on her ever since the first day he saw her. Meanwhile, Preston’s best friend — the reliably sarcastic Denise (Lauren Ambrose) — finds herself locked in an upstairs bathroom with Kenny “Special K” Fisher (Seth Green). (Needless to say, Kenny is the only person who actually calls himself “Special K.”) Kenny is obsessed with losing his virginity. Denise, meanwhile, won’t stop talking about the sweet and dorky Kenny that she knew way back in elementary school.

And then there’s William Lichtner (Charlie Korsmo). He’s spent his entire life being tormented by Mike and he specifically goes to the party looking for revenge. However, he has a few beers and quickly becomes the most popular senior at the party. He even gets a chance to bond with Mike…

Can’t Hardly Wait is a favorite of mine. It’s one of those films that doesn’t add up too much but it’s so so damn likable that it doesn’t matter. It’s full of smart and funny scenes and all the actors are incredibly likable. If you’re not rooting for Preston and Amanda by the end of the movie then you have no heart. In fact, Can’t Hardly Wait is a lot like Empire Records. They may not be much depth to it but it’s so sincere and earnest that you can forgive it.

You can even forgive the generic name.

Back to School #58: She’s All That (dir by Robert Iscove)

Posted on September 17, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

She’s All That, a 1999 high school-set adaptation of My Fair Lady, has a lot to answer for.

When I, as an impressionable 13 year-old first saw this film, I left the theater believing that high school would be full of random, fully choreographed dance-offs. That, after all, is what happened towards the end of She’s All That. After watching as handsome jock Zack (Freddie Prinze, Jr.) spent almost the entire movie changing Laney (Rachael Leigh Cook) from an artist into a Prom Queen, the great prom dance-off made for the perfect climax.

I mean, just check it out:

Imagine how disappointed I was, once I finally did reach high school, to discover that it was actually nothing like She’s All That. There were no big dance numbers for no particular reason. I went to five different proms and none of them were ever as much fun as the prom at the end of She’s All That.

So thank you, She’s All That, for getting my hopes up.

As for the rest of the film, it’s a guilty pleasure in much the same way as Never Been Kissed. I was recently doing some research over at the imdb and I was surprised to discover just how many films Freddie Prinze,Jr. made between 1999 and 2002. For the most part, they’ve all got rather generic names. What’s funny is that I probably saw most of them because, back then, I would get excited over almost any PG-rated movie that featured a cute guy and had a hint of romance about it. But, with the exception of She’s All That, I can’t really remember a single one of them. But you know what? Freddie Prinze, Jr. may not be a great actor and his films may have basically all been the same but he had a certain something that, when you were 13 or 14, made him the perfect crush. There was a hot blandness to Freddie Prinze, Jr. that prevented him from being compelling but did make him the perfect star for a film like She’s All That.

Along with featuring that prom dance-off and being the epitome of a Fredde Prinze, Jr. movie, She’s All That is also remembered for featuring Rachael Leigh Cook as one of the most unlikely ugly ducklings in the history of the movies. Rachael plays Laney and the entire film’s starting off point is that Zack has made a bet with Dean (Paul Walker, as handsome here as he was in Varsity Blues) that he can turn Laney into a prom queen. However, it should be a pretty easy bet to win because all Laney has to do is let her hair down, start wearing makeup, and stop wearing her glasses.

Myself, I’m severely myopic. Usually, I wear contact lenses but occasionally, I may be running late or may not feel like putting my contacts in or maybe I just want to try a different look. So, occasionally, I’ll wear my glasses and I have to say that, other than a few guys who always make “hot librarian” jokes, everyone pretty much treats me the same regardless of whether I’m wearing my glasses or not. I do have to admit though that, when I take off my glasses and dramatically let my hair down, I always say that I’m having a She’s All That moment.

Anyway, She’s All That is okay. I like it but I don’t love it and, to be honest, the film’s main appeal is a nostalgic one. Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Paul Walker both look good, Rachael Leigh Cook and Jodi Lynn O’Keefe will keep the boys happy, and Matthew Lillard has a few good scenes where he plays an obnoxious reality tv celeb.

And there’s always that dance number!