Primetime review

Primetime takes one of the strangest phenomena in 2000s television, the enormous popularity of Chris Hansen and To Catch a Predator, and looks at what may have been happening behind the camera while America was cheering it on. The result is entertaining and interesting, but also much harsher toward Hansen than I think the story necessarily warrants.

The movie focuses on the period when that show was becoming a huge phenomenon. Hansen and his producers are running sting operations where adults show up expecting to meet minors and instead find Chris Hansen sitting there with a camera crew before the police come in.

Twenty years ago, America loved this show. Hansen was basically a hero to a lot of people because here was television apparently doing something useful and exposing some truly awful people. Primetime takes a much darker view of all of this.

It focuses on how reckless the production was behind the scenes, the pressure for ratings, what they were asking the decoys to do and how little concern there sometimes seemed to be for the people working on the show. One of the major characters is a young male decoy who gets thrown into a situation he is clearly not prepared for, and the movie spends a lot of time on the psychological damage being done to the people making this television show.

It also portrays Hansen himself very harshly. He's shown as arrogant, manipulative and pretty callous toward the people around him. His marriage and infidelity become part of the story too.

One important thing to know is that this isn't really a straightforward Chris Hansen biopic. It's heavily fictionalized. Characters are composites, some events are invented or compressed, and the movie is using this era of reality television to make a broader point about what happens when journalism, entertainment and ratings all get mixed together.

I understand what the movie is doing. I just don't completely agree with its perspective.

Yes, this was reckless television. They were breaking things to get the show made. People around the production were being put into situations that probably shouldn't have happened. But they also caught a lot of people who showed up intending to do horrible things to children.

I don't think the movie gives enough weight to that side of it. It felt like it was determined to portray Hansen in about as negative a light as possible, and at some point I started questioning the motivation behind that.

I also don't particularly care about whether Chris Hansen was cheating on his wife. That's not why people remember To Catch a Predator, and I thought some of that material was unnecessary.

This was also just a pretty reckless era of television generally. This was around the same period when reality television and daytime talk shows were constantly pushing people into increasingly ridiculous situations because everybody was chasing ratings. Hansen and Dateline were part of that environment.

So I understand the criticism. I just think the movie stacks the deck against him a little too heavily.

Still, I enjoyed it and I'd recommend seeing it. I just think it's getting a little too much hype. Don't go in expecting the greatest movie you've seen this year.

It's good. It's interesting. And it definitely gives you something to argue about afterward.