Challenge, The
How great a friend is TV when you're pathetically hung-over? When you're a little worse for wear, groggy as hell with just enough energy left to pull yourself to a couch and flick the remote, you'll happily watch any old crap.
Hence, I sat through an hour and a bit of this delightfully shithouse Olsen twins movie. Now in my defence there was little sport to flick over to watch, and when I did chance upon this it grabbed my attention when I discovered that the made-for-TV-film had a Survivor theme to it, and I love Survivor . Alright, soft defence, I'll admit, but that's the story I'm sticking with.
Anyway, in a nutshell, the girls play twins (surprising, I know) each living with different parent who meet up again on a game show called The Challenge where they have to win challenges (obviously) as a team to secure themselves college tuition (stay in school, kids), reacquaint themselves with each other, meet a dreamy guy, and sell as much Olsen Twins DVD/clothing/dolls/books as they possibly can.
Every actor involved in this thing has the look of someone who is just so thankful they have an acting gig and don't have to resort to scat porn to pay this month's bills - except the Olsens of course, who are at their sassy and slapsticky best. Better even than the hilarious “there's a car in the kitchen” episode of Full House , which I'm sure you all remember.
Then - just when things are winding down, all the issues have been resolved and we are about to see the inevitable ‘happily ever after' kiss from the girls (to their respective character's boyfriends – not to each other, that'd just be weird) the lame predictability of it all is sharply halted by a sublime stint of reflexivity not seen since the Scream movies, as the said kisses are suddenly interrupted by all the Olsen's other love interests from their other bazillion tween flicks, who emerge to re-declare their love and fight over them. As my impaired mind blew a gasket as such a complex intertextual commentary my heart suddenly ballooned as I was then treated to a moving montage of the girls from all their movies – watching them grow up before my very eyes, while getting the subtle message that for all the dream-boat boys they pine for in their movies, it is really each other that they truly, and only, love. No, not in that way pervo. That'd just be weird.