Primetime: A Review

PRIMETIME

I have some memories of To Catch a Predator, the 2004-2007 NBC show where alleged sexual predators were confronted on camera. I was not a regular viewer, finding the entire thing sordid. Now we see the rise and fall of To Catch a Predator and its host, Chris Hansen, in Primetime. I figure it aims to be something like Network but ends up being a cross between On Patrol: Live and The Gong Show.

Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) has been working with the vigilante group Perverted Justice to catch several predators. Hansen's NBC reports profile various men who go to what they think is a rendezvous with an underage girl or boy. In reality, the various schmucks end up facing this scowling, theatrical figure repeating the lurid messages these men sent to the decoys. Hansen believes that he is doing great, noble work. However, he is perennially under the shadow of NBC News main newscaster, Stone Phillips (Bill Heck). Try as Hansen might, he is not taken seriously as a major news anchor the way Phillips is.

Enter young Dan Plum (Skyler Gisondo). Dan is an aspiring actor who is looking to get into the Screen Actors Guild. For that, he needs screen credits. He is advised by his friend and fellow actor Troy (Eric Rahill) to "stay in his lane". With Dan's thin frame and youthful looks, I think his "lane" would be what would now be called a "twink". That, however, is perfect for To Catch a Predator, who need faunlets to be decoys for the men lured into this web of sordid sleaze. Dan is rushed to the latest location and given virtually no time to prepare and pretty much no information about the scene. To his absolute shock and horror, "Decoy Dan" finds himself in front of a man, naked from the waist down, pleasuring himself. 

Despite this freakish beginning, Dan soon starts getting into character. It is an acting job for him, with the small bonus of doing good for the children. For Chris Hansen, however, To Catch a Predator is making him look like he's starting to go bonkers. The primary problem Hansen faces is his mistress, Krystle (Caroline Hebert). Hansen may have a loyal wife in Mary Joan (Anna Faris), but he is not above indulging in the pleasures of the flesh with someone other than Mary Joan. Hansen is caught himself on camera with his mistress, with the National Enquirer tabloid chomping at the bit to release the info.

Hansen has more problems. To Catch a Predator has been moved up to primetime, where it could topple Lost in the ratings. Hansen and Perverted Justice are looking for a "whale", an alleged predator with a big name or position to build up big ratings. That "whale" might be in Texas. Perverted Justice operative Xavier Von Erk (Matthew Maher) may have finally broken through to get a potential political figure. Dan Plumb is becoming distressed by his typecasting and by Hansen's vague God complex. "We're cleaning the world of an ancient evil", Hansen tells the actor. Hansen keeps pushing Plumb to keep the lure going. The whale ends up committing suicide, but will anyone else fall morally or emotionally?

Again, I am not in a position to say how accurate or inaccurate Primetime is. I judge only by what I see and am shown on the screen. By that standard, Primetime ends up making Chris Hansen a bit of a nut driven by jealousy and a messianic sense of self. Right from the beginning, Primetime made Hansen look rather loony and creepy. Our first introduction to the To Catch a Predator host is seeing him move his hands about, reciting "I will undress you, you will undress me". I do not think that director Lance Oppenheim and/or screenwriter Ajon Singh intended Hansen to echo The Silence of the Lambs' Buffalo Bill. With Ari Balouzian's music and Robert Pattinson's performance, however, one almost expected Hansen to come out from behind the curtains cuddling a poodle. 

It is established that the dialogue was just Hansen reciting what one of the alleged predators (Tony Revolori) had written. It is in how Pattinson's Hansen recited the words that makes him look bonkers. It luxuriated in the words, suggesting that Hansen found the situation almost exciting versus taking a more professional stance. Throughout Primetime, Oppenheim, Singh and Pattinson seemed determined to make Chris Hansen look like he was closing in on leaving sanity. 

They also made Chris Hansen look like an insecure narcissist. He kept insisting on redoing the To Catch a Predator voiceovers. He bristled whenever he encountered or even saw Stone Phillips on television. His declarations about "cleaning the world of an ancient evil" made him look either crazy or totally self-important. At one point, Hansen couldn't get to the potential predator waiting for his fly. He was too hazed by the thought of the National Enquirer reporting on him. Poor Dan, desperate to not let the potential predator escape, is forced to improvise. 

That leads me to one of Primetime's greatest points of contention. I do not think that Primetime made the alleged predators sympathetic. If it did, it was probably due to some bad choices Oppenheim and Singh made. There is the issue of how Hansen comes across. Compared to him, the other men look almost decent (the naked man pleasuring himself in front of a horrified Dan notwithstanding). One of the alleged predators is disabled, walking into the meetup with dual walking sticks. It is almost hard not to feel for someone struggling to walk while walking through a major rainstorm. When another potential predator, a rabbi no less, shouts at a belligerent Hansen, "YOU'RE DOING THIS FOR TELEVISION?!", one almost again thinks that the bad rabbi is right. Hansen may see himself as a vigilante ridding the world of an ancient evil. Primetime, intentionally or not, paints him as pretty whacked out.

This perception of malevolence from the hunters and not the hunted is compounded by not just Hansen's behavior. The various people at Perverted Justice do not come across well either. Matthew Maher's Xavier Van Eck comes across as the stereotype of an online stalker. His eagerness, almost glee, at finding a "whale" seems to come not from a sense of saving kids but like someone winning an online video game. The entire reason Plum is on set is because their regular decoy refused to appear unless Perverted Justice's merch site took down questionable underwear. I asked at that point, "Perverted Justice has a merch site?" and "They sell underwear?". It looked tawdrier than the men who thought they were going to get at some teenagers. That, again, was not the intent. That is how it ended up looking like. 

As a side note, part of me wondered if Dan Plum would have almost literally been thrown into his first encounter without knowing anything about the premise. It might have happened, or it might have been for dramatic effect. I just struggled to believe it.

The concluding section of Primetime should fill the viewer with horror. Instead, it had me literally howling with laughter. When the Texas police learn who the "whale" is (Assistant District Attorney Bill Conradt, played by Alex Winter), the police chief (Bokeem Woodbine) shouts, "THAT G--D-- DEMOCRATIC POS!" (I've opted to not use the entirety of his statement). I did actually start laughing at this moment. The dialogue and Woodbine's performance seemed so outlandish as to slip into open parody. 

Robert Pattinson has received wide praise for his performance as Chris Hansen. I cannot join in that chorus. Pattinson seemed overtly theatrical and exaggerated in his manner. There seemed to be something grandiose and overt about Pattinson's acting in Primetime. For me, it came across as broad and silly. It was as if he was Acting with a Capital A. I do not know why people are touting Pattinson for award consideration. 

Much better is Skyler Gisondo as Dan Plum. I wonder if Primetime did not make a mistake in not having Dan and not Hansen be the center of the film. Seeing how To Catch a Predator and Perverted Justice became more about ratings than about keeping kids save through his eyes would have been interesting. Gisondo has several good moments in Primetime. There is when he, single-handed, stops one of the alleged predators from leaving. There is the shock at seeing another man show himself off. His scene when Hansen speaks about his quasi-messianic mission is quiet but effective. I'd put Skyler Gisondo up for consideration in Supporting Actor. 

The only other performance that I remember was that of Bill Heck as Stone Phillips, Hansen's one-sided rival. Heck came across as doing a Chris Parnell impersonation of a Stone Phillips impersonation. I actually thought that it was Parnell as Phillips. Why exactly Chris Hansen had this deep-seeded rivalry to animosity towards Phillips' stiff manner one can only guess. 

Ari Balouzian's score made Primetime sometimes come across as a horror film. Granted, that might have been the intent. However, the score seemed better suited to something like Obsession than Primetime. 

Primetime had the odd moment prior to the screening of having Chris Hansen advertise his own venture, TruBlu. I was puzzled by why Hansen opted to use Primetime to promote his own subscription channel. Given how odd almost all of Primetime is, I should perhaps not be surprised by any of this. 

DECISION: D+