Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Loui Blair It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

liquidcelluloid-1 Network: HBO; Genre: Comedy, Docudrama; Content Rating: TV-MA (profanity, mild simulated sex); Available: DVD; Perspective: Cult Classic (star range: 1 - 5);Seasons Reviewed: Complete Series (1 season)George Clooney and Stephen Soderburg's Section Eight production company hits a home run on just their second try. "Unscripted" follows in the reality-bending mold of their faux political docudrama "K Street": real people play themselves improvising in fictional situations shot around real events and injected with other actors playing characters. Got all that? "Unscripted" takes this neo-classic format and gives us three people at the center of it that are so endearing, they take it to the next level. What was before just a technical feat to be admired in "K Street", is now an emotionally wadded experience to be loved in "Unscripted". "Unscripted", in every frame, is about stars Krista Allen, Bryan Greenburg, and Jennifer Hall. It captures the plight of a young, idealistic actor struggling to make it in this bizarre world of Hollywood with more insight and empathy than any other show. The Hollywood of "Unscripted" isn't glamorous, where the burning desire to act goes hand-in-hand with a daily gauntlet of humiliation. To make sense of it all is Goodard Fulton (Frank Langella), the hard-nosed acting school teacher, defining pretension, whose many priceless monologues about every high and low of the soul-consuming "craft" of acting serves as a sort of narrated tour guide to keep his students surviving the Hollywood machine. He tells his students the only way they will be able to do this will be if they "can't not do it". Bryan Greenburg looks like he is on the fast track to stardom. Having a brush with fame on "One Tree Hill" and "Life with Bonnie", he later lands a starring role and a trip to New York in the Meryl Streep/ Uma Thurman movie "Prime". At the coaxing of his roommates he pads his resume and uses his daily life as a training ground to immerse himself in a limping, stuttering character for a role. But what happens to those friends if Greenburg hits it big? "She's just so green" says a casting agent about Jennifer Hall. The adorable singer/songwriter of her 2-chick band Black Liquorish, Jennifer's credits include a line on "Yes, Dear", a brush with Keanu Reeves as a "featured extra" and playing the statue of liberty on the corner of Liberty Car Wash with more gusto then you can imagine anyone else in the world doing. The biggest revelation here is Krista Allen, whose storyline involves a quest to become a real actress despite the reputation of being in "Emmanuelle" ("the James Bond of soft core movies") hanging over her head. There is a sitcom element to the stories of Greenburg and Hall, but watching Krista Allen I became completely convinced I was seeing a documentary - to the point where you have to step back and remember that Allen is playing herself, not being herself. Allen is subject to some particularly stinging humiliation, which results in her taking a role in a 16-year-old's backyard film. While much of this is motivated by the chance to strike back at a Hollywood that won't take her as anything other than a sex object in a 2-piece (the men around her are shown to be pretty creepy), Allen's "character" is a dichotomy that doesn't see using her sex appeal (which includes an affair with Goddard) to get what she wants as undermining her mission. A series highlight is when an enraged Allen tells off a casting director who told her 6-year-old son that he was "not funny". Krista should be proud of this show. This is great work by any standard. Other actors and would-be actors in Frank's acting class include "Tru Calling's" Jessica Collins, Jennifer's increasingly close friend "Dragon" who fights actor outsourcing ("Why did 'Lost in Translation' have to take place in Japan", he asks), and Nick Paonessa who steals Bryan's contacts and accidentally finds himself in a genital warts commercial - a bit that on any other show would be purely sitcom stuff, but here is so well played it gets the biggest laughs of the series. If anything "Unscripted" recalls the UK masterpiece "The Office", a show that finds laughs in total humiliation and refuses to allow its characters a victory until the last possible second. George Clooney (who has proved his classic directorial skills on the big screen) directs the first 5 episodes and Clooney regular Grant Helslov, picks up the last 5. They do one hell of a dynamite job. Each episode is constructed masterfully with an assemblage of audio and video that looks like a documentary and doesn't feel linear. It is a sitcom for people who hate sitcoms. You might call it organized chaos, which at first might not look like it knows where it is going and then brings itself into focus. Where "Street" was foggy, aimless, distant and pretentious, "Unscripted" is sharp, clear, thoughtful, fluid and heart-felt. "Inside Hollywood" shows are a dime a dozen, particularly on HBO. From the scripted wish-fulfillment series "Entourage" to the day-to-day documentary "Project Greenlight" to the celebrity behind-the-scenes cameos of "Curb Your Enthusiasm". "Unscripted" is the best. The best. The only flaw here is that it didn't last long enough to really flesh itself out. I watched the 10 episodes slowly, trying to savor everything, not wanting it to end as soon as it does. The mind wonders what a few more years of Goddard speeches would be like. It is the rarest show that you don't just enjoy watching every episode, but instantly want to watch them again. That, and a desire to know what is happening with the "characters" after the show was cut to an end, is about as high a compliment as you can give a series. * * * * ½ / 5

dan-1062 I couldn't help but be drawn into the drama of the lives of three struggling mid-range actors as they experience the ups and downs of life in Hollywood. While I've read critiques that say their modicum of success makes the show unrealistic, I find it all the more fascinating to see how the lives of these actors change as they fluctuate in and out of Movieland's Pergatory.The story of the down and out actor who crawls home with his tail between his legs has already been told, as has the story of the actor who goes from rags to riches, but the in-between state in which these men women function is something altogether new to me, and I find it far more fascinating than the hyperbolic drivel that the other extremes present.The dialogue in this show is real, and frankly perfect. The story lines are beautifully subtle, the imagery is exactly what it needs to be, and the cameos provide the final ingredient that make this quite possibly the finest television drama I've ever seen.

voncarp-1 Outright awful. A failed attempt at reality with real wannabe actors. Lets make this clear. This isn't reality show as it depicts. Not close. Its not a documentary, nor anything that will catch your interest.When you watch this show you are going to see a number of staged events. Naturally, since its not a reality show. But the staged events are too obvious, the acting is bad, and overall its just plain boring. Movies are good. Behind the scenes are good. Casting, not good. Wannabe actors not good.Back to the staged events. Your going to realize instantly that this is not a reality show when you see the wannabe actors start thinking out loud. Reality shows add speech to images, but it does so in a way set around a situation that makes it believable. Unscripted adds it to narrate and give you the thoughts of the wannabe actors because the wannabe actors aren't good enough to demonstrate their emotions in their acting. Want an example? See the futile efforts of one of the actors trying to play off their acting ability by portraying a stuttering character in a restaurant. Unknowingly, the waitress at the restaurant used to date him. Hmm. Coincidence? Sorry, too obvious. And these circumstances are too common with Unscripted.Hey, Hollywood is popular. Hollywood movies are popular. Even behind the scenes are popular as I mentioned before. Unfortunately, unless your an established actor or a Hollywood star and can see the inside jokes or experiences that Unscripted is talking about, your just not going to find this entertaining.

Ironboundfw Unscripted is a funny hybrid. I don't mean funny in that it makes you laugh. It's funny in that it thinks its audience is a bunch of morons. Part reality, part scripted, mostly improvised. The show takes a bunch of new actors, and a bunch of has been actors (someone please answer why is Frank Langella doing this?) The New actors --- mostly look like they should be in soft-porn movies in late night cine-max. And they should hope this show is canceled quickly because really, do they just want to be known as the actor who did that show where he got to play himself/herself... BADLY.The "has been" actors were never really that big to begin with, so I never really asked... oh, where have they been? more like... oh, why are they back?(EXCEPT for FRANK LANGELLA, again, begging the QUESTION... WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?") The show is bad because well, It's a show about the ups and downs on ACTING... and I'm sorry, I've seen "Fame" once, and that was good enough for me --- YES, there is struggling, yes there is suffering, yes there is heartbreak, but guess what... YES, I DON'T CARE. I DON'T CARE because ACTORS are not the REAL HEROES OF THIS WORLD. I love to WATCH ACTORS play real HEROES or even IMAGINARY ONES... but who wants to see an ACTOR play himself... it's just not interesting. Because at the end of the day, ACTORS are self involved little sh*ts, whose suffering is self-inflected. They chose this life, live with it, please, please don't show me how hard it is. There will be no sympathy gained by it. If anything, I just wish the actors and people who "MADE" it and then decided to put this type of crappola on TV, will just "un-make" it so that I wouldn't have to be exposed to this. YES, George Clooney taking my order at the Broadway Diner in Manhattan would be a treat indeed. (sorry, GEORGE, but what WERE YOU THINKING! Ocean's Twelve and Unscripted in one year --- ouch.) and can the executive at HBO who green lit this be FIRED. Thanks! The show is also so similar to the other HBO show Entourage... which raises the question, IS THERE some RE-PRESSED ACTOR doing the HBO programming as of late. Entourage is not a good show either, but that one at least has Jeremy Piven's slimy agent to keep you entertained. HBO has created some of the best television in recent memory. But thanks to UNSCRIPTED it has proved that it can bull a FOX and create some of the WORST also.