"Cinema Verite" Worth Watching

So last night was the premiere of HBO’s Cinema Verité, the film about the film of the Loud family, billed as the first reality TV show, which is both a ground-breaking achievement, and considering our times and the Kardashian family alone, a dubious accomplishment. Tim Robbins and Dianne Lane are great in their roles, as overly suntanned upper middle-class Californians, although the kids in the film tend to blur together, save for the gay son in NYC. James Galdolfini has a bad hair day throughout the film, which is the result of making him look much like the actual film director. I liked the film, but think I would have appreciated it more if I’d actually seen the ten-hour PBS series about the Loud family when it aired. I was a kid myself then, younger than most of the Loud family siblings, and only heard about it obliquely. My family did watch Archie Bunker and Meathead in “All in the Family,” which was great, timely fun back then. And my favorite show was “Kung Fu,” which every time I’ve seen it as an adult strikes me as Awful. But the Loud family perhaps gets some web redemption (a la Tosh.0), in that they seem more human and resilient by the end of the film.