We Watched The ‘Saved By The Bell’ TV Movie So You Don’t Have To

It’s rather appropriate that The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story (2014) aired this weekend on American television. The public’s unsavoury fascination with celebrity private lives was just exposed (pun intended) once more with the systematic hacking of private photos by some presumed sad-sack dickhead. Unlike that blatant invasion of privacy, films like this one adapted from a supposed “tell all” autobiography by Bell star Dustin “Screech” Diamond called Behind the Bell, are a hot commodity. Spurred on by the interactive element of social media and taken with several grains of salt, these films tap into a more sustainable (not to mention legal) peek behind the curtains of the rich and famous. They’re at least partially fictionalised, mass-produced entertainments, after all.

Even if The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story had been as scandalous or controversial as promised, which is isn’t, it would have been hard for the original stars of the original series to truly object given how obvious it is that Diamond is merely extremely bitter over his tenure at the series. As it stands, this very bland made-for-TV movie is more about how badly treated the wannabe porn star (remember Screeched: Saved by the Smell?) thought he was than anything resembling a sizzling hotbed of secrets.

Where was the sex? Where were the drugs? Where was the in-fighting? I’ve seen more salacious material on an episode of Touched by an Angel. The biggest reveal appeared to be that Mark-Paul Gosselaar dyed his hair blonde and that the role of Lisa Turtle was meant to be that of a “Jewish American princess”

There was the bit where Dustin Diamond dreams of having AC Slater’s body and dipping into a hottub with some gorgeous babes.

Or when the Elizabeth Berkley character announces that she loves to dance, foreshadowing the Showgirls (1995) audition that we never see.

Then there was the bizarre subplot about Screech’s friendship to a network extra with very high hair who then blackmails the actor for fame and money. The story is not even resolved, that’s how little the filmmakers cared.

The production couldn’t even get the colour of the show’s graduation outfits right. It’s hardly surprising that The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story was cheap, but this was just lazy and unresearched. And that’s not even beginning with the way almost none of the actors looked like their real-world counterparts or how they plastered hideous fake eyebrows on the face of Dylan Everett in order to look more like Mark-Paul Gosselaar. So bad were they that people on Twitter coined phrases such as “brow wig” and “eye merkins”. Indeed.

At least they got in the famous “I’m so excited, I’m so… scared!” scene that star Elizabeth Berkley had to fight to be included, but even that wasn’t as entertaining as it ought to have been.

Comparing it to other recent television movies of this sort, it certainly falls to the low end. Sure, it’s no unfathomable disaster like the stupid Liz & Dick (2012) starring Lindsay Lohan alongside a perpetually confused Grant Bowler. But neither is it anywhere near as gaudily entertaining as House of Versace (2013), which starred a perfectly cast Gina Gershon as Donatella Versace with her platinum white hair, ducked face, and pill-popping excess.

All of these are productions of the Lifetime Channel, which was once most famous for terrible inspired-by-true-events movies of the week about teenage girls falling prey to sexual predators, usually starring Tori Spelling. As Brian Moylan labelled it in The Guardian, they are the home of television clickbait. Their next big-name expose is The Brittany Murphy Story (2014), which has already been lambasted for its (yet again) terrible wigs and exploitation. Have you seen the actress playing Alicia Silverstone? You don’t make decisions like that if you’re interested in making good movies.

Much better was CrazySexyCool: The TLC Story (2013), which cast actors who can, well, act, and who look a lot like their off-screen personas. Director Charles Stone III, experienced from theatrically released films like Drumline (2002) and work on the Friday Night Lights series, uses archival footage and the band’s brilliant music to build an entertaining movie for VH1. Hopefully Lifetime are able to mine that particular R&B energy for their Whitney Houston biopic, I Will Always Love You: The Whitney Houston Story (2015) somewhat improbably set to be directed by Oscar-nominated actor Angela Bassett, a friend and former co-star of Houston’s from Waiting to Exhale (1995).

There’s sadly nothing in The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story that suggests the behind-the-scenes antics antics were at all as much as the show was to the seven-year-old me in 1992. It has more in common with the beyond-its-prime staleness of Saved by the Bell: The New Class. Worst of all, there’s nothing quite as hypnotically sexy as dreamboat Zack Morris. What gives?

Thank you and good night.