Reality Queen! (Review)
Reality Queen! Might Not Be Good, But I Loved Watching It
Stars & Popcorn’s motto is that not all great movies are good. I won’t go so far to say that Reality Queen! is a great movie, but damn is it funny. Nothing is off-limits as it takes aim at every aspect of America’s obsession with celebrities who are only famous for being famous. Reality Queen! might be dumb but that’s because it’s making fun of how dumb this celebrity trend is, and boy, is it brilliant when it comes to being dumb. The film is basically an article from The Onion that came to life. That doesn’t excuse it for constantly going for the low hanging fruit, but sometimes the low hanging fruit is just as good as the stuff at the top of the tree.
Reality Queen! sets its sights on everything wrong with supposed “celebrities” today. The film follows a straight-faced British journalist making a documentary on heiress turned celebrity, London Logo. It takes aim at everything from pet psychics to sex tapes to the sleazy journalists that make their living covering every little thing “celebrities” do. It examines the inexplicable extravagance of London’s life while begging the question of why she’s famous in the first place.
Julia Faye West is absolutely brilliant in her betrayal of airheaded narcissistic celebutant, London Logo. She might not be at any risk of winning an award, but her commitment to her absurd character and over the top performance is hilarious. At first glance, she seems like a typical hot girl given a film role because she’s, well, hot. But I found her to be pretty damn funny because of her conviction to the words coming out of her character’s mouth. Opposite her for most of the film is Kate Orsini who is really good at playing `flabbergasted”. Her character is the only “sane” one in the film and she simply can’t believe the absurdity of the situations she’s witnessing, especially when it comes to the abyss of London Logo’s stupidity. The rest of the cast (including Denise Richards, Loren Lester, and Candace Kita) proves to be perfectly suited for their roles, as they deliver ridiculous dialogue with straight faces all while hinting at the fact that they’re in on the joke.
Reality Queen! is pretty heavy-handed when it comes to its message about the strange state of celebrity these days. London Logo is obviously based on Paris Hilton and her rival Kristy Kim is clearly, you guessed it, an imitation of Kim Kardashian. A little on the nose at times, but Reality Queen! never aspires to be anything more than a mockumentary satirizing those that are famous for being rich. At the same time, it poses the question of whether these people are simply buffoons, too self-obsessed to realize just what jokes they really are or if they are masters at marketing. Their ratings, followers, and billions might suggest that there’s more going on than meets the eye. Could it be that we live in an age where con artists are dominating the social hierarchy? Maybe, but Reality Queen! is so much more enjoyable if you leave your brain off until the end.
Watching this film was an almost surreal experience. The higher functioning part of my brain kept telling me that none of this was really that funny. All of the jokes were dumb and the film wasn’t really that good. But I was cracking up constantly through Reality Queen!. The movie is like a good dad-joke. It’s mind-numbing and you kinda hate yourself for laughing at it, but you’re also probably going to tell it to your friends. Reality Queen! embraces it’s baser nature and lets the audience know early on that it’s well aware of just how moronic everything about it is. That’s probably why it was so easy for me to sit back and simply enjoy it for what it was. A low brow movie filled with dumb jokes that were told really well thanks to a pretty stellar cast.
Look, I’m never going to say that Reality Queen! is a good movie in the traditional sense of the word. I will say that it plays like a skit that was rejected from Saturday Night Live for being too long. It manages a respectable batting average with the jokes and isn’t afraid to really push the absurdity of it all. There was a lot of potential for it to go completely off the rails, but the cast does a shockingly good job of keeping it on track. I hesitate to compare it to films like Naked Gun or Airplane, but it does have that same sense of humor and I’m a sucker for it. Would I recommend Reality Queen!? Sure. But I might also suggest taking part in a few mind-altering substances first. They certainly won’t hurt.
