Intimate Portrait: Jenny Jones

Rating

Director

Unknown

Screenplay

Unknown

Length

43m

Starring

None

MPAA Rating

Not Rated

Review

PREFACE:
In the early 2000s, I was writing reviews for an outfit called Apollo Guide Reviews. That website has since been closed down.

Attempting to reconstruct those reviews has been an exercise in frustration. Having sent them to Apollo Guide via email on a server I no longer have access to (and which probably doesn’t have records going back that far), my only option was to dig through The Wayback Machine to see if I could find them there. Unfortunately, while I found a number of reviews, a handful of them have disappeared into the ether. At this point, almost two decades later, it is rather unlikely that I will find them again.

Luckily, I was able to locate my original review of this particular film. Please note that I was not doing my own editing at the time, Apollo Guide was. As such, there may be more than your standard number of grammatical and spelling errors in this review. In an attempt to preserve what my style had been like back then, I am not re-editing these reviews, which are presented as-is.

REVIEW:
No matter how interesting or important a celebrity’s life story may be, a poorly crafted biographical film can make it uninteresting and pointless.

The cable television channel Lifetime has long called itself the channel by, for and about women. Their “Intimate Portrait” series brings famous women celebrities into the limelight with hour-long documentaries. Information is an integral part of these programs, but the execution leaves a great deal to be desired, as we can see in this documentary about the television personality Jenny Jones.

As with all good documentaries, “Jenny Jones” takes us on a journey into the childhood, adolescence and adulthood of an intriguing woman. Information abounds as we discover the ambitious nature of one of television’s former shining celebrities.

Her talk show was merely one step in her ongoing pursuit of fame. From a very early age, Jones encountered both big-time success and failure. Her earliest failures came at the hand of her oppressive father, and those led to her greatest successes. Not long after the family moved from Poland to Canada, Jones left home to pursue a career. From performing as a backup singer for Wayne Newton to multiple successes as a stand-up comedienne, Jones achieved the American dream. Her biggest success came as host of her own television talk show. It was during this time that she suffered some great tragedies: the loss of her father and the murder of one of her guests by another.

Many who watch this documentary will watch to find out what transpired with the murder and subsequent trial. However, these events are covered only briefly in this plodding program. While her life is incredibly interesting, this unoriginal presentation is obvious from the instant the inappropriate, although highly recognizable voice of Ed McMahon starts the show.

Documentaries are meant to inform us about the importance of celebrities and events. Perhaps the initial concept for this episode came from a need to explain the complicated life of an intriguing woman, but this production shows little evidence of consideration for the viewer. Some documentaries are boring and pointless because they lack the style of many fictional films. It is common for documentaries to focus on description and while this is sometimes unavoidable, it tends to put the audience to sleep, rather than increase their knowledge.

The great thing about top-quality documentaries like The Celluloid Closet is that they mix in a sufficient amount of humour, dozens of expert testimonies, interesting music, and dramatic pacing. And they have a voice that isn’t superficial.

Intimate Portrait: Jenny Jones is virtually humourless. It features interviews with very few people, none of whom are particularly familiar to the audience. The music is inappropriate. The 45-minute length feels like two hours. Jones deserves a much better format for her life story. Too bad it landed in the hands of folks who try hard to provide information, but fail to deliver the quality of programming their audience deserves.

Review Written

Unknown