It’s not just drugs and wild parties for Hollywood celebrities after dark. Some of them like to play charades, too.
Such was the premise of at least a couple of “Celebrity Charades” shows in past years, the latest one in 2006 for cable.
Charades also ends up being one of the games played on the new “Hollywood Game Night” that made its debut Thursday. But it was one of a handful of different games that pitted one couch full of stars (and a regular person) against another.
Though the title would make one expect stars playing Monopoly and Clue at home with other stars, “Hollywood Game Night” is in a glitzy studio purporting to look over the lights of Hollywood, before a studio audience and with a house band that one celebrity guest, Martin Short, complained about being too loud.
Short, who dominates every setting he’s in and usually delivers the entertainment, may be wasted as just a player. He should have been host. Instead, Jane Lynch presides, cracking the dim jokes provided her by the show writers.
Short’s teammates were Lisa Kudrow, Alyson Hannigan and an insurance salesman who headed the team; opposite them were Matthew Perry, Daniel Dae Kim and Kristin Bell, who looked as if she gave birth immediately before the show. Leading that team was a drug consultant.
“Hollywood Game Night” suffers from a couple of network conventions — it shouldn’t be an hour long for one thing. No TV game show should be longer than a half hour, this way people have their chance to go and play with http://www.casinodames.com. Also, it kept previewing what was coming next, showing answers, wrong replies, funny rejoinders from the players minutes before they actually happened. Let’s not lose the illusion that this is a live venture, shot from start to finish with no rewinds. Plus, none of the material warrants seeing twice.
The intent is to make it seem like a cool party that regular people can sit in on. Actually, it’s more like “Password,” “What’s My Line” or any other formalized quiz involving famous people.
They’re out there in front of people to show how quick they actually are on their feet. And poor Matthew Perry is terrible. He hits the buzzer between games just to see what it sounds like he had been beaten so much (often directly against Kudrow, in a forced “Friends” reunion not lost upon the audience).
It’s a little surprising what passes for quiz competition these days. The first one involved identifying name brands of snack foods from Cheetos and Fritos to Funyuns and Combos (which stumped both teams).
Another involved identifying the celebrity drawn by smallfry painters. A third required placing a star’s pictures in chronological order. Even the charades were celebrity-tied; each team had to act out movie names from the resume of either Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise.
They keep repeating that the prize money is $25,000 but do not make clear until the end that celebrities will have to give theirs to a cause.
A different set of celebrities will come each week; the games are also expected to change. It’s just that neither of them seem like they’ll improve.
Idea for “Curb Your Enthusiasm:” Larry tries to get out of being part of “Hollywood Game Night.”