It wasn’t too many years ago that the peddlers of reality television
were regarded in Hollywood as a band of gypsy reprobates, gatecrashers
of the industry whose stolen time in the sun surely wouldn’t last long
when stacked up against the quality and tradition of conventional
programming. Six seasons of American Idol later — and after four straight
years of that being the top show on television — how quaint and downright silly
that notion now seems. Reality TV, of course, has spread like a
wildfire, rapaciously and unapologetically gobbling up standard,
scripted fare, and giving viewers both a window into and mirror image
of lives less ordinary.

But there’s another more diagnosable and largely undiscussed trend
bubbling just beneath the surface: namely, the manner in which the conventions and modes of expression of these reality shows — from direct-address “confessionals” to lurking camera angles and ironic framing — are bleeding into scripted entertainment and other Hollywood art forms, from Michael Moore’s incendiary and populist documentaries to hit sitcoms like The Office.
With the release of this past week’s kids’ flick Surf’s Up, another frontier has been crossed. The choice of docu-style in such a mainstream piece of animated fare is
more than an unusual one — it’s downright groundbreaking, basically
staking the movie’s box office odds on the assertion that kids already grasp
this new style of storytelling. For the full feature piece, from FilmStew, click here.