'The King of Comedy' meets 'Living in Oblivion'
Another of the small, but growing, number of Lo-No budget movies about Lo-No budget movie-making. Think of 'Living in Oblivion', 'The Independent', etc. etc. Aspiring writers are constantly told "write what you know about" so it's not surprising that aspirant movie writers write about aspirant movie writers and the frustrations they face.
The basic premise of this movie is simple, schlock movie producer wants to make an more upmarket "arty" movie, an aspiring director wants to make a serious anti - violence movie but with no script using an experimental improvised (very cheap) shooting method. The Producer's former leading lady, and lover, wants to prove she can really act, disguises herself, auditions and gets a part in the movie. Together with a small crew they head out to the desert to shoot the film. There they meet an escaped lunatic with a script in one hand and a gun in the other. He hijacks the crew and forces them to start shooting his script.
Except he doesn't. The whole film takes so long to get to the point where the story really starts, ie the moment where Shatner's maniac scriptwriter and the crew meet up, that there is no time left to tell it and the movie quickly descends into gun-play before abruptly ending in a short series of twee happy-ever-afters for all the characters.
Shatner gets all the good lines some of them are genuinely funny, the man has a nice comic touch, but an hour after watching the film I can't bring to mind any of them. A slight, light little film. It drags in places but doesn't outstay its welcome. It could have been better but easily could have been a hell of a lot worse.
In 2005 this film was released on DVD in the UK under the title "Shooting Stars" by Digiview Productions with a run time of 91 minutes 36 sec. Cert 12 Aspect ratio 4:3
