The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story (2014)

Thanks for the memories!

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Best movie ever. I can't beleive it didn't get a theatrical release. My wife made me watch it once and now we watch it first thing every Saturday morning mostly because our local tv stations just stopped showing saved by the Bell reruns on Saturday mornings last month. It's definitely the next best thing. And the only movie I have watched in the last 14 years.

The movie was interesting enough, but just because it was Dustin Diamond's version, it makes it difficult for someone to watch (and believe) it without any trace of prejudice.But the worst thing is that the whole plot is weird. All of a sudden Diamond is the center of the universe and the other 5 cast members revolve around him. Diamond is the josher but at the same time the mature one, the rest just join him on the set. We didn't see much about their lives out there, their thoughts and their problems.The young actors were very good in their roles. Unfortunately, the movie didn't meet my expectations, since in this kind of movies I need to see a collection of verified information from different people who were involved and an equitably shared time to the protagonists.

I don't even know where to begin with this film. I don't even know why they bothered making it. Lifetime is the home of bad, bad TV movies but this one takes the cake of stuff I've seen lately. I admit I was actually excited about this. I am an adult who grew up absolutely LOVING Saved By The Bell. Kelly was the love of my young life, Zack was my idol, Screech was my best friend...you get the drift. I thought initially it was very smart of Lifetime to explore this show and what it legitimately did for Television. I understand there were some very dramatic things that happened behind the scenes so this could have been very interesting. It is a colossal horrible mess. The casting is the only thing they didn't screw up because it was okay (most will disagree with me) but the story they tell is ridiculous. Because it is Unauthorized they make up sets that look nothing like the actual ones, stories and scripts that never happened and events that were very unlikely. I would have rather watched a documentary about the making of the show then watch them fake their way through this crap. Despite being so terrible I sat there and watched it and maybe because I wanted it to be so good and maybe because I loved Saved By The Bell so much...somehow I found some semblance of redemption in it and was okay with wasting an hour and a half on it.Now don't get me wrong when I said the casting was okay. The casting is JUST okay. The kids were decent, they looked the part and I think if they had a script that was even okay that they too would have done alright. This script could have been written by monkeys on typewriters. Sam Kindseth shows some talent and some genuine promise as Dustin Diamond/Screech. He actually does his best to show some emotion. I actually thought Dylan Everett did a decent job as Mark-Paul Gosselaar. Much like Kindseth, he tried his best given the material. He almost seemed like he had enough chemistry to carry the movie much like Gosselaar carried Saved By The Bell. Julian Works tried very hard as Mario Lopez but wasn't very well cast. Still he was okay and the chemistry with him and the other cast members were decent. Tiera Skovbye, Alyssa Lynch and Taylor Russell were okay but very underused and were really only there to fulfil the purpose of being those characters and get very little depth. Same could be said for Ken Tremblett who seemed to really nail the Dennis Haskins role in the two or three scenes they actually showed him.In order for this film to work, they needed a script that truly captured what this show meant to pre-teens and to Television in general. They also needed a cast that had the sort of chemistry that the actual cast had twenty plus years ago. This film had neither of those things. This was slapped together to make a couple of books and move on. Director Jason Lapeyre has virtually no experience behind the camera and Ron McGee, who has written a lot of stuff (most of it looks like garbage) should stop writing. I blame him for the majority of why this didn't work at all. Why they would put the point of view to Dustin Diamond's character is beyond me and they never really touch on any of the important moments in the shows history. Maybe the show doesn't need a behind the scenes film but I still think it could have been done right. It wasn't. Its bad. Unless you're a true die hard fan like me, you won't find much reason to watch this. And if you do...be warned. 4.5/10

This unauthorized version is told from Dustin Diamond's recollection of events. Since this story is about a group of six teenagers and what went on behind the scenes of the TV show, one man's recollection of events certainly skews history and hence the unauthorized title.To be fair, Dustin's version of events in the movie version doesn't really target anyone negatively other than the fact that, as the youngest cast member, he felt as though he was an outsider. This lead to awkward and uncomfortable situations with other cast members but we get the impression that on the whole the cast were good friends off the set as well.Given time limits, many things were skipped which I would have liked to see as someone who followed the show during it's original run. 'Good Morning, Miss Bliss' had Hayley Mills, T.K. Carter and Joan Ryan as teachers along with Heather Hopper and Max Battimo as students. All these actors were not covered in the movie nor why they were excluded when 'Saved By The Bell' carried on with Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Dustin Diamond, Lark Voorhies and Dennis Haskins all continuing their roles.Diamond's version for cancellation of 'Saved By The Bell: The College Years' differs substantially from mine. I remember wanting to watch it to continue watching these characters and their exploits taken to a new level in college but the show was so atrociously bad that even I didn't watch it to the end of it's run. Despite Diamond's view that this was the end, it was not. He forgot to mention the 1994 TV movie 'Saved by the Bell: Wedding in Las Vegas' as well as Dustin Diamond reuniting with Dennis Haskins in 'Saved by the Bell: The New Class' which had more seasons and episodes than the original.On the whole, this movie portrays Diamond as pretty clean-cut and a victim of blackmail from a guy that introduced him to alcohol and drugs but what would you expect from a story being told only from his viewpoint? It would be nice one day if we got another version or even had someone collectively put together all the major actor's recollections and make a more thorough and balanced review of events on film.