A game show for keeps

Game shows and movies have never mixed very well. Cinema's most pretentious treatment of our little genre, Robert Redford's Quiz Show, got some critical kudos but always seemed overwrought to me. Everybody in the movie played their roles so flipping seriously. I wanted to shout, it's just a game show, people, even if it's rigged!

Yes, the fifties rigging scandals were the genre's closest brush with genuine tragedy. So maybe I'll cut Redford some slack for his solemnity. Now a Dutch moviemaker is planning a less serious approach to game shows. In fact, it's gamers-meet-slashers in the upcoming Quiz by writer-director Dick Maas. (Hm, the title's not far from Redford's.)

The premise in Maas' words: "It’s about a game-show host who has an appointment with his wife and daughter in a restaurant, and he’s there waiting for them at night, and they don’t show up. Suddenly, a strange man appears who claims to have kidnapped his wife and daughter, and says, 'You have one hour to answer 10 questions, and if you answer them correctly, you will see them alive again.'"

Doesn't exactly sound like a folksy Regis quizzer. The story assures us that the movie won't go as gory as Maas' previous efforts "in which bodies and heads are impaled with abandon." As Vlad the Impaler once said, if you gonna impale people, do it with abandon.

Production is scheduled for the summer.