SURVIVING EDEN

Now, here is a great idea trapped in an pretty-good movie. Surviving Eden is a deadpan faux-documentary in the sprit of the popular ensemble comedies Best in Show and A Mighty Wind (and their related movie siblings). An overweight, dreadfully boring guy named Dennis Flotchky (Michael Panes) makes in on to the number-one hit reality series "Surviving Eden" bascially on a lark. His best friend Sterno (Peter Dinklage) secretly taped Dennis wandering around grocery aisles and bumbling at his job at the mini mart and submitted the video as an application. But the producers (Jane Lynch and Sam Robards) think, "Bingo!" and find that they have found the perfect actor... errr... "contestant" that will grip America. Dennis ends up winning the season of the show (where contestants run around in the tropics like on Survivor, but in this case are naked except for the leafy concoctions that they create themselves), and a cult of personality is born.

Dorky Dennis suddenly finds himself over a hundred pounds lighter, and a million dollars richer. Surviving Eden (the movie) has a documentary crew following hapless Dennis around after his winnings, as he gets a haircut, transforms his wardrobe into L.A. hipster, and even gets involved in a love triangle with two of the other contestants, a partying nun Sister Agnes (Savannah Haske) and a manipulating, money-grubbing psycho Maria (Cheri Oteri). Much fun is to be made of Los Angeles, and there are many laughs to be had at Hollywood's expense.

Despite this excellent premise, I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that Surviving Eden should have better. Maybe I'm used to the top-notch casts of Christopher Guest's comedies, or maybe it was just that the actor who plays Dennis, Michael Panes, was almost as dull as the character himself. He just didn't have it in him to carry the movie. For that matter, it was unsurprising that Jane Lynch, as the producer, and Peter Dinklage, as his neglected friend from his old life, effortlessly steal every scene they are in. Lynch plays a version of her power-hungry, oversexed executive (see The 40-Year-Old Virgin, among others), but she does this so freaking well that she makes me howl every time she is on screen. And I'd like to thank director Greg Pritikin for recognizing Peter Dinklage's sexiness and finally giving him a role to match.

That said, Surviving Eden, when it works, is a sharp and cynical satire of the reality television world with plenty of zingy one-liners. If you feel you are too highbrow for reality television, but find yourself sucked in anyway, you will certainly find much to laugh at in this film.