User Reviews

This was being pushed as a sexy camp TV movie. It's not. It's a (purportedly) factual account of how the TV show Dynasty was developed and what eventually killed it. It follows the married producer and writer team of the show--it shows how their lives were affected and why they came up with the more outrageous plot lines (the lily pond fight, the Moldavian massacre, etc.) and the 1991 reunion show that wrapped up everything. There are also a few vicious but funny jabs at the Dynasty spin off The Colbys.

I do like the fact it doesn't ignore the gay fans of the show and on it and Alice Krige is obviously having a whale of a time playing Joan Collins. The most fun out of this comes from seeing unknown actors playing well-known actors! With a few exceptions (Krige especially) they look nothing like the people they're playing! Also it shows all the actors in a positive light--even Collins and Evans are shown as being great friends (no way that's true).

Still, it was not that good. It moved slowly and, on TV, they loaded the commercials during the last hour so it took forever. And I do question how factual this movie is. Still it's fun for a mindless two hours.

Contrary to what some die-hard Dynasty fans may feel, this tele-movie is actually a lot of fun to watch if you lived through the 1980s. OK, it's not completely accurate, but this isn't a documentary. It's an amusing look back at a television phenomenon.

Remember William Goldman's book on writing for Hollywood? His summing-up of the film industry was simply "Nobody knows anything." And here we see it in its fullest flower, with producers and writers literally making it up as they go along.

At one point a character says "Shouldn't we give the viewers what they need rather than finding out what they want and feeding it to them?" The American television industry is affectionately but mercilessly taken apart in this movie and I suspect a lot of people in the industry will squirm with recognition at similar artistic compromises they've made.

But that's much too serious a note to end. I can only say that I found this a fun way to spend two hours. Others may disagree, but I saw every episode of Dynasty and The Colbys that was made, and I enjoyed this movie a lot.

While I had enjoyed, in a campy, retro, self-referential way, the behind the scenes looks at Three's Company, Charlie's Angels and Betty Thomas' superior film of this mini-genre, The Late Shift, this ill-conceived piece of mirthless mayhem was just a waste of time. While in those other films the actors had a passing resemblance and sounded similar to those being portrayed, and incidentally seemed to be having a good time with their roles, here everyone just seems lost and miscast.

Alice Krige as Joan Collins comes close. Well, the occasional haircut and shoulder pad hit it on the head as well. Everything about this was wrong. The Rock Hudson AIDS revelation even elicits a viewer chuckle, as "Linda Evans" is told of his illness. "Oh that's silly," she laughs, "he looked fine when he was here. We even had a kissing scene-" Her mouth comically drops open with the realization of what that implies. Poor Linda...she quits the show because an article calls her The Loneliest Woman in Hollywood. soon thereafter there's a knock on her door by her neighbor who asks her to turn down the music. of course, it's musical cheese king Yanni. More chuckles.

Nothing was handled in depth, there were no juicy revelations, there were no moments of "oh, that's how that came to be", and worst of all, almost no mention of TV mainstay Heather Locklear. For a trashy nighttime soap to be presented as garbage is oddly appropriate but the show must have had at least some interesting backstage antics beyond "we need to beat Dallas in the ratings" and "we should sell Dynasty evening wear!"

In what has now become a genre unto itself (deliberately campy/tacky "behind the scenes" TV movie on the making of a 70's or 80's hit series - see also the ones about "Three's Company" and "Charlie's Angels" to name a few), this one scrapes the bottom of the barrel. A disclaimer at the beginning mentions name changes and time compression in order to account for the less than factual film that follows. They needn't have bothered. Virtually every detail of the film is completely and totally inaccurate!!! Told from the point of view of Esther Shapiro (Reed), the show's conception to it's peak to it's demise is shown through snippets of recreations and backstage squabbles. Reed, though NOTHING physically has been done to make her resemble her character in the slightest, manages to turn in a compelling and interesting performance. She is the sole bright spot of the movie. Singer, as her husband Richard, is also amusing and they stir up a little chemistry together. Hammond, again looking NOTHING like his real life counterpart, does an energetic job of trying to convey Aaron Spelling. Every other actor playing a real-life performer is miscast and horrendously badly acted. John neither sounds nor looks like John Forsythe, airheaded Hardin has nothing whatsoever to do with Linda Evans and, while the hair and clothes occasionally suggest her character, Krige is just plain bad as Joan Collins. None of these actors is portrayed as a human being. They're just cartoon cutouts in dress up. The film was going for a light touch with an intentionally kooky script and tongue firmly in cheek. But when the facts of the real story vary this much from the supposed behind the scenes expose, the whole thing just turns into a mess. To name just a FEW of the inaccuracies: Forsythe would not have been recording "Once upon a time there were three little girls..." in 1980. That voice-over was in the can half a decade earlier. Linda Evans would not have been out in the parking lot as part of a cattle call to read for Krystle. Though hardly a major star, she had more clout than that! In fact, "Dallas" had been touted as "The Linda Evans Project" during preproduction! She was to play Pamela Ewing. Joan Collins was only absent from ONE EPISODE of "Dynasty" during her contract dispute, yet she's shown here watching the show on TV without her. The whole thing was said and done before any new shows aired. Heather Locklear wasn't even AT the Moldavian Wedding, so her scene there is ludicrous. Catherine Oxenberg didn't exit the show in a car crash. Actors are already in costume and on set before they find out their lines? Maybe every so often, but this is treated as commonplace here. The Shapiros were ousted by the last season. There isn't enough space to list everything. The clothes are mostly wrong, the hair is nearly always wrong (Linda NEVER had the golden blonde color that Hardin sports throughout the film, Joan's big wig look didn't kick in until a few years after her arrival) and the whole thing is just garbage. How can there be a movie about "Dynasty" that doesn't even MENTION Fallon, Jeff, Adam or Claudia? Worse than that, the REAL dramas behind the scenes are either ignored fully or glossed over. For example, George Peppard was the first Blake. What happened? Pamela Sue Martin was a major player on the show, but she quit. Why? Linda and Joan both went through at least one divorce during the run. Joan's daughter was nearly killed in an accident with a car. These are just a couple of points. What does this film offer up?? John Forsythe occasionally checked out Heather Locklear's ass? Linda Evans did yoga on set? Joan Collins was self-involved and money-hungry? Wow...... What an expose. A few goofy, funny moments do not make up for this turd of a movie which borders on slander to the real life actors involved. There was already an "E! True Hollywood Story" that revealed far more (even if not a lot) than this. And if anyone should play Joan Collins, it should be Lesley-Anne Down, though she should be glad she had no part in this disaster.

Interesting how the show used news cuts of Reagan embroiled in Iran-Contra or other derogatory reports in order to mark the time frame of the scene. The show ended with a Voice-over attesting to how Reagan's everlasting legacy will be making a creditor nation into a debtor nation.

Will Hollywood never tire of spinning political agenda instead of making good entertainment?

The characters were all parodies and the show seemed to be only about the wish of the creator to create a legacy. The actors chosen looked like John Forsythe, Linda Evans, and Joan Collins and were passable lookalikes - but were not credible acting impersonators. The show seemed aimed at defining the creator and producer - everything else was unimportant. Even the average viewers who were cut to every so often were parodies. If an unemployed overweight couch potato grousing at everything and his wife were the target demographic group then how the show ever made it past the first season is unknown. It seems "Muldavia" and "Crystal's evil twin" were Dynasty's self proclaimed Fonzie jumping the shark on waterskis wearing his leather jacket.

The Australian and New Zealand actors and camera teams seemed to distance the work from the Hollywood elites - but they are what they are. I noticed none of the directors or producers allowed their names to be attached to the actual presentation. They must have feared for their reputations or careers - yet put their idealogy out front.

What a wreck of a movie! Camp classic (Valley of the Dolls - so bad it's good, as another comment above aptly points out) it was not. I'm kicking myself all day today for wasting two hours of my life on this thing. Were these actors deliberately trying to sabotage their own careers? My antidote this morning was to waste two more hours (of repeats) on the newest guilty pleasure on TV - The O.C. - which is already starting to veer into "absurdist" territory in its plot lines, the "formula" having simply been tweaked for the present decade. Formula writing is the bane of American TV. This is always where it ends up - a parody of a parody, exhausted and flopping around like a fish on the beach.

After watching the Gilligan's Island, Charlie's Angels and Three's Company exposé/fantasy romps, I really did not expect much when I tuned into this latest exploitation of an old television series. Even with my VERY low expectations, however, the thing still stunk.

This felt like whoever wrote the script decided not to interview or speak with anyone actually affiliated with Dynasty's production; and instead chose just to read some old National Enquirer gossip stories about the show for background, watched only a few episodes of the series (thereby confusing or omitting many major characters) to see what it was about, opted to portray the actors as having the personalities of their television characters, then wrote a trite script of what they imagined might have gone on behind the scenes based upon what they saw in some bad Hollywood cliché movies about television and movie productions. It appears the producers, network, actors, and everyone else involved bought into that thinking as well.

There had to have been a real story somewhere in the history of this television series, but there is no way this could have been it.

Okay, folks, enough caterwauling about the two hours you won't be able to get back because you watched this movie. Don't tell me you didn't see the PREVIEWS? And even if you didn't, COME ONNNN!!! It's a TV movie about a glam-trash series that celebrated the greedy excesses of the Reagan Years, by snatching the torch from another show that did exactly the same thing...except it did it in Texas. We are not talking Shakespeare or Ibsen here. Hell, we're not even talking Harold ROBBINS, for cripes' sake! Yeah, it wasn't juicy enough, or camp enough, or as tongue-in-cheek as it should've been if it were intended to spoof or lighten the behind-the-scenes antics of the actors who starred in it, the producer who launched it (Aaron Spelling), or the writing team who created it (Richard and Esther Shapiro.) But consider this, too, folks: most of the principal cast members are still very much alive, and some of them even get work from time to time. The permission of each and every one of those folks has to be secured before the REAL story can ever be told, and I'm pretty damn sure that not everyone was happy about THAT idea.

So writer/director Michael Miller worked with what he could. Bravo for him, since bits and pieces of the REAL guilty pleasure this movie could have been still manage to shine through in spite of itself.

As is, Bartholomew John couldn't have looked and sounded less like John Forsythe if he tried, but consider whom he's playing. That would've be about like trying to find a look-and-soundalike for Charlton Heston, (who incidentally did appear in the horrid DYNASTY spin-off, THE COLBYS.) The main thing here was to convey the ESSENCE of the personalities involved, and in that case, the actors pretty much succeeded, but none with more success than Melora Walters as Linda Evans, and the ever-so-underrated Alice Krige, as close to Joan Collins as you'll get without employing the services of 'la diva' herself.

Perhaps the 'definitive' expose of what went on behind the glitz and glamour will someday be commended to film. And maybe that won't happen in any of our lifetimes. Till then, there's this, so either deal with it, or as one reviewer already did, flip over a couple of channels to Fox and watch "The O.C." Or if you want REAL trash, stay tuned for "Who's Your Daddy?"

I was a big Dynasty fan so needless to say I watched this crap carefully! Seems to me that they failed to do some of the obvious research before filming this crap! Heather Locklear's character, Sammy Jo, was not in attendance at the wedding in Moldavia!! So how is it that Esther Shapiro ordered more blood be spilled on her??? I refused to believe that Linda Evans was this blond air-head they made her out to be! The chick playing Joan Collins, what a joke!! We have seen Alexis wannabes come and go ever since Dynasty debuted, and this was the best they could do???!!! And where the hell was Fallon? No mention of the Carrington's number one daughter, Pamela Sue Martin or Emma Samms. They did however show us daughter number two. Another joke! Catherine Oxenberg who first played Amanda Carrington did not exit the show via a car crash as they showed in this movie. During the summer hiatus of 1986, Oxenberg was fired and then replaced by Karen Cellini by the time the show returned for the season premier in the fall. I could go on and on about all of the errors shown in this thrown-together-piece-of-crap!! The folks at Dynasty may have done themselves in with the over-the-top story lines after season 4, but this movie certainly did an injustice to the entire run of the show and I hope for the one who have never seen Dynasty will watch it on Soapnet or if it is ever released on DVD. Trust me, the first 4 seasons of Dynasty and even the final season are great! Dynasty: The Making Of A Guilty Pleasure should never be shown again!

With Dallas riding high in the ratings, abc decided to make Forth Worth – a show about a rich family in Texas. Producer Aaron Spelling rejects this project for what it is. Meanwhile husband and wife writing team Esther and Richard Shapiro are trying to their project off the ground; a series about the newly rich and privileged in Regan's America. The two projects get run together and Dynasty is created. Te first season does so-so in the ratings but it is not long before the producers and writers find themselves aiming lower for a bigger audience.

As the title suggests, this is a celebration of the ludicrous television series Dynasty and as such will be of interest to those of us that remember it. This is not to suggest that the film is any good though, because it has tvm writ large across every single scene. A potted history, this film allegedly avoids anything that would see the makers sued (eg the truth) and instead just flows through the making of the series with its various ridiculous twists and turns. The film matches the tone of the series and is all a bit silly and exaggerated. It is all a bit too affectionate though and doesn't have any teeth – seeing the rather insulting methods of winning ratings as daft fun rather than something detrimental to mass media etc. This will probably appeal to fans of the series though and, to be honest, who else will be watching this? The cast are very average. Reed and Singer are both good fun but the majority of the cast are overshadowed by the real people they are portraying. Everyone tries hard but Hardin, Hammond, Krige and John all just mug along with the easy caricatures given to them to work with. Overall then a trashy TVM very loosely based on the broad sweep of a decade of one television show. It entertains in a very basic way but one can't help wonder how it would have been if it tried to do more.

As a former fan of Dynasty (though I confess not remembering some of the plot lines described in this movie), I must say I was appalled and horrified at this pathetic TV movie. There is a certain kind of "camp classic" - like Valley of the Dolls - that's so bad it's good. This wasn't it. This was just so bad it was bad.

I realize I may be alone in my opinions. First of all, I read in several places that Alice Krige "nailed" Joan Collins. She nailed her, all right, but not in the way one might think. One of the message board posters asked if Lesley-Ann Down was offered the role. I for one would have found this refreshing. Down has the glamour to do the role, and I think she would have been great. But if she was offered this role, it's no wonder she turned it down.

The casting of this whole movie was just sad, and the thing looked cheap. As for the acting - awful. Even the normally wonderful Pamela Reed couldn't pull this off.

I don't know if any of the behind the scenes stuff was true or not. There didn't seem much interesting about it, however, if it was.

I can't say I was disappointed. I had seen the previews and knew what I was in for, but I guess I was hoping against hope that it might be at least fun. It wasn't.

I'm sitting here watching it on PVR and I can't really believe the slapdash nature of the whole thing, but there is one comment I really must make: Alice Krige is a phenomenal actress.

She seems so vivid and ephemeral a talent, that, really, the only time she can knock it out of the ballpark is when she has sufficient makeup and costumes to allow her to, in essence, channel herself.

She looks nothing like Joan Collins, but she is a riot, "doing" Joan Collins. And the last time she registered on the pop culture radar was her unsurpassable performance as the Borg Queen in "Star Trek: First Contact." (Backing up my earlier point.)

This is not a very good movie, and even I, twenty years later, can tell you how badly wrong they got the blocking of the first season finale (a fact, about which the knowledge of, I'm not altogether proud) but Krige OWNS this stupid thing.

I was watching this film with great interest. Dynasty was one of my favorite programs growing up in the decadent 1980's. I was anticipating watching this film because I really liked Dynasty. However, the acting was awful. I couldn't remembered most of the story lines myself. I didn't remember that Alexis was suppose to be queen of Moldavia. Alice Kreig did a great job portraying Joan Collins. She got her mannerisms down to a t. The show Dynasty downfall was back in 1988 (towards the end of its run.) The country was going into a different direction at the end of the Dynasty run which is why middle America wasn't too interested in the show anymore. Dynasty was a social commentary of the Reagan years. It was a show of pure escape at the time.

I worked on DYNASTY and was the eyes and ears for the producers -- working on the set, in the dressing rooms of all the actors, and in the "behind closed door sessions" of all things related to the production. I enjoyed the "untrue" but campy fun made for television movie DYNASTY: MAKING OF A GUILTY PLEASURE. I do think that writer Matthew Miller and producers Robert Setner, Frank Von Zerneck and Randy Sutter (all of whom I worked with in the past) really missed the mark in their story telling. It was my experience with this production team and writer that they have always had trouble "telling a good story" even when it could be done as formulaic as a fictionalized "behind the scenes- biopic." If only they had asked me to do some fact checking or asked for some real honest to God behind the scenes stories, I would have been happy to help. I loved working on DYNASTY and could have given the ABC audience what they really wanted- the dirt on Joan and Linda. Oh well, maybe I should write that book that so many people have offered me the opportunity to write. I keep turning them down because I am very loyal to the actors whom I love dearly, and to the most "gentlemanly of all gentlemen" in the business--Mr. Aaron Spelling. maybe in a couple of years the "real behind the scenes story can be told" and I will regale you all with a true to life 'cat fight" that ensued when Linda told Joan she could go home early and let me read the part of Alexis for Linda's close ups - because, as Linda told Joan- "He does a better Alexis than you do..." Imagine that cat fight! Richard

Well well, I loved Dynasty in the 80's, watched it religiously for the ridiculous plot, terrible acting and the fabulous clothes and situations.

It is only fitting that a show about Dynasty should share the campiness of the original!

They certainly made fun of Dynasty, surely this is NOT a serious chronicle as it is so entertaining I am loving every minute!

The actors picked to play the originals are great! And there actually is some really good acting. It must be hard for a real actor to "pretend" to act badly!

Roll on the Dallas remake, and hopefully Dynasty will return to our screen in a film too!

Love it!

Diego UK