Review: The Unauthorised Saved By the Bell Story

The supposed story of how the popular Saturday morning TV show “Saved By the Bell” came to be, and ended up a bit of a phenomenon. The film focuses mostly on co-star Dustin Diamond (Sam Kindseth), the youngest cast member who struggled to fit in and eventually tired of playing the geeky comic relief.

The story goes that Dustin ‘Screech’ Diamond wrote a tell-all a while back that supposedly dished a lot of dirt on his time on TV’s Saturday morning favourite “Saved By the Bell”. His co-stars refuted a lot of what was written, and Diamond himself later stated that it was ghost-written and distanced himself entirely from it. Yet here he is as the EP of this 2014 TV movie that apparently is unofficially based on that book, presumably trying to set the record a little straighter than the book might’ve done. Or to put it another way, Dustin Diamond needed money when he wrote the book, dude needed money when he made his sex tape (which he claims he hired a penile double for), and dude probably needs money now. Yeah. Directed by Jason Lapeyre (“Who Killed JonBenét?”) and scripted by Ron McGee (“The Unauthorised Full House Story”), let’s just say that the Canadian accents aren’t the only suspicious thing about this ‘expose’ of the goings on filming everyone’s favourite late 80s-early 90s California-set Saturday morning pre-teen show. The TV-movie format obviously means that things can’t get too scandalous, though I get the feeling that Diamond’s (or his ‘ghost writer’s’) assertions about Mario Lopez’s supposed date rape allegations (and NBC offering up hush money to the alleged victim) were left out more for ‘we don’t want to get sued’ reasons than PG reasons.

The real problem I have with the film is that, as told from Dustin’s point of view, it all smells like horse shit for the most part. I get it, he was significantly younger than his co-stars and it must’ve been quite difficult fitting in on set. I have sympathy for him for that, most certainly. However, from everything that has come out about Diamond, I’ve just got a short amount of time for this ‘I’m a dork and nobody likes me’ crap, OK? If he had an ounce of credibility he’d either own up to writing the book, or he wouldn’t have been executive producer on a film that is at least partially based on said book. Don’t get me wrong, if anyone is sympathetic to the issues those of us on the geekier side of things go through, it’s this uber-nerd right here. I just find it hard to accept Diamond as anything more than a turd, rather than a nerd. I mean, this is a guy who accepts zero responsibility. Not for the book, he claims he used a double in his porno, and he even claimed his infamous meltdown on “Celebrity Fit Club” was basically scripted by himself (That one I actually partially believe, it’s reality TV after all). He has no semblance of ownership and personal responsibility whatsoever, and seems motivated entirely by money. Sorry, Dustin. I’m not buying your woe is me horse shit. Oh boo hoo, Dustin. So Tori Spelling didn’t want to be your off-camera girlfriend. You still got to have your first kiss with her, so that’s better than most of us, OK? Cry me a river. I’m sure the other cast members were closer, fair enough. But I highly doubt they were jerks to him. The one Diamond moment in the entire film I bought was when he hits someone for calling him ‘Screech’. There, that’s the Dustin Diamond that registers as most true right there. The dude clearly hated being Screech, but he was also kind of a dick about it. How do I get the impression that this part was accurate? Because even in this sanitised and highly skewed version of events, Diamond still comes across as a jerk who loathes his job and doesn’t give two shits about fans. Even here they can’t spin things enough to make the guy look good.

Away from Diamond, the film still has plenty of problems. For starters, the casting and characterisation are pretty appalling, and not just because of the Canadian Californians. Even though he’s the EP, Diamond endorsed the film having not actually seen the script or the final product! I guarantee he approved of the casting of Sam Kindseth as himself, though. And probably oversaw the depiction of the character in general. Kindseth is more aesthetically pleasing than Diamond himself, and at no point does he do the ‘Screech’ voice, which is an unforgiveable sin. Nope, not even in the recreations of the show. His voice is way too low, and doesn’t convince at all. Diamond didn’t get a deep voice until much later, I believe. Dylan Everett I knew previously from playing troubled and deeply insecure teen Campbell Saunders on a show I promise I’ve never seen called “Degrassi”. Cast here as hunky “Saved By the Bell” wise-arse lead Mark-Paul Gosselaar, he plays him…exactly like Campbell, minus the suicidal thoughts. I’m sure Gosselaar was far from the uber-confident smart arse he played on TV, but no way was I buying what Everett was selling, and the fake blond dye job looks appallingly ill-fitting on him. He’s a decent actor, just not a decent Mark-Paul Gosselaar. Faring worst of all however (aside from the actors playing the network execs, who are porno-bad), are Tiera Skovbye and Julian Works as Elizabeth Berkeley and totally fucking not Mario Lopez. Skovbye, who was previously the star of the rather lame “Even Lambs Have Teeth” is horrendous as Berkeley, and I don’t think it’s entirely intentional. Yes, they’re probably having some fun with Berkeley’s inability to act in “Showgirls”, but even in the non-“Saved By the Bell” scenes the girl just doesn’t convince as an actual human being from the planet Earth. Works is hilariously miscast, he looks like Fez from “That 70’s Show” with a perm, for crying out loud. You don’t get any indication of Lopez’s charisma or appeal with the ladies from this guy, he’s more of a dork than Screech (or at least this film’s version of Screech/Diamond).

There were actually some things about this film that I rather liked. Some of the material is pretty interesting. I’d forgotten that the show had started as the Hayley Mills starring “Good Morning Miss Bliss”, and that Lark Voorhies’ Lisa Turtle was a character on that show, in addition to Gosselaar’s Zack Morris, Diamond’s Screech, and of course Mr. Belding. It’s interesting to see that the show was originally not meant to be about the kids, but it was eventually tweaked into the show that we all came to know as “Saved By the Bell”. It didn’t start off a hit, but once they got the formula right and kids started tuning in, it became huge. And it really was just kids and teens. I kinda love that adults didn’t ‘get’ the show, actually. I openly admit to having been a fan of the show growing up, and it’s a show that has been copied many times over the years to no real success. That’s because, let’s face it, “Saved By the Bell” wasn’t that great to begin with. It wasn’t meant to be. It was right place, right time, right cast. It worked, that’s all. Meanwhile, I actually didn’t know that Jennie Garth (from “Beverly Hills 90210”) originally auditioned for the show, in addition to eventually featuring Tori Spelling, not to mention eventual “90210” cast member Tiffani (Amber) Thiessen being a mainstay of “Saved By the Bell”, of course. The film also highlights the problem with making a kids TV show: Kids. The young actors are gonna act like kids off-camera too, because they are kids.

Of the cast and characters, some actually aren’t bad. He doesn’t look much like Dennis Haskins, but Ken Tremblett does a really good impersonation of, if not Haskins, certainly Haskins’ portrayal of Mr. Belding, and that’s enough for me. Although her line readings are a little flat, Taylor Russell is a fair approximation for what I’ve heard about actress Lark Voorhies over the years (Minus the alleged bipolar issues that she herself has denied). I’ve always understood Voorhies at that time to be rather quiet and very much a devout Jehovah’s Witness. More importantly, she gets Voorhies’ ‘Lisa Turtle’ act down perfectly. She clearly studied the show in preparation, I’d say. I also had zero idea that Voorhies and Gosselaar were an item at one point in real-life. It’s a shame that Alyssa Lynch doesn’t look much like Tiffani (Amber) Thiessen, because the character as written plays as pretty true to the actress who found herself playing two very different types of roles on two different TV shows, that both revolved mostly around her looks. I always had the feeling she wanted much more of her career than that (Berkeley too, obviously), and I think you get a bit of a sense here that she was not just the hot bimbo she played on TV, though the Berkeley character is the one who suggests asking for more serious storylines.

By and large, though this just isn’t good. The big problem with this film is that the story just isn’t anything new. Nothing happened here, at least the events depicted that this film would have you believe, that didn’t happen on every other TV show, particularly those with young cast members. It’s incredibly clichéd. For a TV show made in the late 80s and into the 90s, the soundtrack might strike some as far too early 80s. However, it’s also likely the most expensive thing about the film, and there’s some good songs. There’s a particularly clever usage of ‘We Got the Beat’ by The Go-Gos, and who doesn’t love Cameo’s ‘Word Up’? Well no one asked you, did they? Occasionally interesting but generally unconvincing, made-in-Canada TV movie offering up very little that’s new and from a point of view that is questionable to say the least.

Rating: C