The Unauthorized Saved By The Bell Story

New to DVD is the recent television biopic "The Unauthorized Saved By The Bell Story" through Lionsgate Home Entertainment. Told from the perspective of actor Dustin Diamond, aka "Screech" Powers, this made-for-TV memoir is everything you'd want in a low budget TV movie: Cheesy performances, weak dialogue, and earnest performances by the movie's cast.

Timed for the 25th anniversary of the original show's premiere, "The Unauthorized Saved By The Bell Story" takes us back to Bayside High School and what it was really like for the actors in the cast of the show. Actor Sam Kindseth (playing Dustin Diamond) does a commendable job navigating our story. As Diamond we see all his high grades with the show's incarnation and success, and then failing grades to drug and alcohol addiction. In 2009 Diamond published his tell-all autobiography "Behind The Bell" to terrible reviews, and "The Unauthorized Saved By The Bell Story" is Diamond's co-produced TV version of his book.

Other notable performances are delivered by juvenile up-and-coming actors Dylan Everett (a creepy doppelg�nger of Mark-Paul Gosselaar as Zach), Alyssa Lynch (as Tiffani-Amber Thiessen who played Kelly Kapowski), Taylor Russell (as Lark Voorhies who played Lisa Turtle), Tiera Skovbye (as Elizabeth Berkley playing Jessie Spano), and Julian Works (as Mario Lopez playing A.C. Slater, complete with bad wig and accent). "The Unauthorized Saved By The Bell Story"'s casting director is "Saved By The Bell"'s original Casting Director Robin Lippin, and it's one of the few things it gets right. The film is filled with melodrama and pathos, an element which just comes off as bratty and spoiled for the actors that were originally involved in the success of "Saved By The Bell."

"The Unauthorized Saved By The Bell Story" is here thanks to the folks at A&E Television Networks and the Lifetime Channel. Lifetime is quickly carving its niche as cable TV's top "crank-it-out" true life stories. This year they also hit an all-time new low with "The Brittany Murphy Story." Following the biopic formula, and cramming the lives of six child actors into a 90-minute teleplay, it focuses on the buildup and success of these kids and their show, then their rock-bottom downfall, and then their hopes for the future.

I have to admit, I watch "Saved by the Bell" on Saturday mornings because for the camp value alone, but there were kids just a few years younger than myself who were die-hard fans. The show's initial incarnation ran 4 seasons, totaling 86 episodes. This was their world, and Zach and the other kids from Bayside High were superstars in it. But the more and more I talk to people from my age and younger, I find that so many people watched it "discreetly." The show has found a whole new body of fans in syndication on NBC/Universal stations and classic TV cable channels like MeTV. For stations like this, "Saved By The Bell" is an E/I show, helping them fulfill their educational/informational requirements with their kids' programming.

So if you're in the mood for something fun, light, campy and want to relive a bit of what was the magic and behind the scenes "scandal" of a tween sit-com, then sit back, enjoy, and re-experience life "Saved By The Bell." It's a new guilty pleasure to watch "discreetly."

Lionsgate Home Entertainment- DVD
$14.98
http://www.lionsgateshop.com/product.asp?Id=31610&TitleParentId=10025