I never expected Primetime to be a glowing portrayal of Chris Hansen. I went into it assuming it would show why hosting and being one of the creative forces behind a television show about catching pedophiles was, at best, morally complicated and at worst, creepy, exploitative and dangerous. Nothing about him or the show deserves an effusive, hero-style biopic, but even so, I am rattled at how mean Primetime is to the To Catch A Predator host.
Lance Oppenheim’s movie doesn’t seem to have the slightest interest in portraying Hansen as a layered human being with positive and negative qualities. Here, Robert Pattinson plays him as a caricature that is almost exclusively made up of negative qualities, and as an audience, we are asked to take a seat and watch those negative qualities depicted in lampoonish detail.
In Primetime’s world, he’s a bad father, which means watching him wake his kids up to inappropriately show them scenes of himself on To Catch A Predator. In Primetime’s world, he’s a disappointing husband, which means getting multiple conversations of him apologizing to his wife while she looks dead inside. In Primetime, he’s a hapless producer and a fame whore and a self-interested coworker and a thoughtless affair partner, which means scene after scene of his unfavorable qualities exposed with cartoon-like intensity.
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Even the way Hansen is shot feels like an opinionated choice at times (which you can get a sense of in the trailer). Primetime uses a lot of close-ups and odd angles and sometimes striking color palettes in a way that almost feels reminiscent of the drug scenes in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He’s not moving, existing and talking with the pace and rhythm of a human being. Instead, he’s vibing and awkwardly putting on a persona and, at one point, making animalistic noises.
It’s like Primetime views him as a facsimile of a person and, at times, even like a monster. The movie is quite clear and obvious with that monster comparison, and we get it in the form of a story, repeated references to that story and even direct visual imagery. Is our main character the monster? Are the pedophiles he’s trying to catch the monsters? Is everyone a monster? Is society the real monster? It’s vague in an artsy way, but it’s pretty clear in the movie’s eyes that Hansen is complicit and guilty.
In some ways, Pattinson’s larger-than-life portrayal (which people are comparing to The Joker) is not a surprise. Oppenheim has been very open that he wasn’t interested in making a straight biopic. He said in a recent interview that the movie is meant to be an “homage to the internet’s version” of Hansen. The director is clearly more interested in the persona than the person, which is fine, but if the movie is about the persona, it’s quite odd that it doesn’t spend much time dealing in the positive mythologies around Hansen.
To be clear, we get the occasional scene of Hansen in all his glory as an on-camera host, but it’s counterbalanced with scenes of him freezing up, struggling to meet network pressures and getting too emotionally overwhelmed to do his job. There are some fun nods to his trademark voice, his catchphrases and the way he portrays himself on camera. We even get the occasional gesture toward a redemption arc or bit of personal growth, but Primetime isn’t really interested in fully playing into that aura or building a prolonged success story around him. Even the fans of his that we meet are bumbling and oafish cops or bloodthirsty psychos, which further undermines him.
I don’t think Hansen, who isn’t happy about the movie, is owed a positive biopic or even a more modern grey-area-style take on his life and legacy. If Primetime wants to paint him as a monster, it’s free to do that, but the odd thing is, I’m not sure anyone involved in the movie actually set out to do that. Second lead Merritt Weaver, who plays Hansen’s producer, told us in an interview that one of the first things Oppenheim said to her as she was considering the role was that this movie is “not a hit piece against anyone.”
Whether they intended it to be that or not, however, it kind of comes off that way. Because there are so many scenes of Hansen being an unhinged, almost inhuman monster… because there are so many scenes of him being a bad husband, bad father, bad friend, bad everything… because he’s consistently shot in an off-kilter and unsteady kind of way… because so much of the runtime depicts his negative qualities and so little depicts his positive qualities, Primetime does come off like a hit piece. It comes off like a mean-spirited one, and even as someone who expected an unflinching tone, I’m still a little shocked.
You can and should check out Primetime for yourself when it hits the movie release schedule this weekend. Overly negative or not, it’s a big artistic swing filled with great performances.