Ringmaster

The Boston Phoenix

DIRECTED BY: Neil Abramson

REVIEWED: 11-30-98

This amounts to an elongated episode of Jerry Springer's notorious tabloid TV talk show, where the audience gets to go behind the cameras and discover how Springer and crew panhandle for dirty laundry. The faux drama revolves around a trailer-trash mom, her fellatio-feasting daughter, the man of the trailer (the employment-challenged stepfather, whom they both sleep with), and the farm-boy fiancé -- who unwittingly takes his fiancée's diaphragm for a test drive with his mother-in-law-to-be. That's good enough to get them on Springer's show, along with a couple of hip-hop sisters from Detroit who have dogged their best friend's man. Things get even dicier when the rednecks and the Motown crew get set up in the same LA hotel, where a whole lot of bed games and selfish depravity goes down.

Fans of Jerry will be ecstatic over the unbridled use of profanity and gratuitous servings of T&A. The writers even try to make the trashy characters likable, though everyone dwells at the same level of contemptuous amorality. But the most reprehensible act in the film comes from Springer himself: not his being in bed and having sex to his favorite episode, or his weary, "above it all" scowl, but his outburst of moral vindication in the wake of an emotional fracas that was carefully incited by his salacious muckraking.

--Tom Meek

Capsule Reviews
Ringmaster
Ringmaster

Film Vault Suggested Links
Muriel's Wedding
Trees Lounge
Swingers

Related Merchandise
Search for related videos at Reel.com
Search for more by Neil Abramson at Reel.com
Search for related books at Amazon.com
Search for related music at Amazon.com

Rate this Film
If you don't want to vote on a film yet, and would like to know how others voted, leave the rating selection as "Vote Here" and then click the Cast Vote button.