I laughed, and I hate boy bands by anthuswilliams

When I was in junior high at the tail end of the 90's, I had a friend named Aron. He was an overweight kid with beetle eyes buried deep inside his face, and he wore the same shirt for three days. And he fucking loved the Backstreet Boys. He'd go around listening to (and singing) Backstreet Boys songs for weeks on end. My point being, if I were shipped out to Guantanamo Bay to be tortured, Metallica wouldn't be the interrogator's music of choice.

I hate boy bands with a passion usually reserved for mothers-in-law. So when I opened your script, I expected it to be one of those situations wherein I would rather contract gallstones than continue reading.

Luckily for me, this wasn't the case. In the first place, it was funny as all get out. You have a Farelly-type humor in your script. You take unlikely and seemingly unoriginal plot elements and turn them into something so outrageously hilarious and over-the-top that each joke, in and of itself, fuels my read for the next several pages. An example of this is with Grace, where I thought Mikey was just some dude who lived with his mom, and then it's revealed that the two of them are dating. I nearly died.

Furthermore, it speaks volumes as to your skill as a writer that you can take an entire genre of music I would just as soon see burned, concoct of a quartet of characters whom I wouldn't have looked at twice in any other script, and have me care about how the show is going to end. So kudos to you for your ability as a writer.

Although I was able to keep reading (mostly because of the laugh-out-loud jokes that occurred once every eight or ten pages) there were periods of dryness throughout, and as I finished the read I did have a sense of could-have-been-better lingering about me. In the interest of improving the script, it's this that I want to address.

My first issue was with character. Although as I stated earlier, the script makes me care about the characters, this emotional connection is coupled by the fact that I wouldn't be even remotely interested in them if they were handled by any other writer.

With the possible exception of Davey, the characters tend to come across as extremely one-dimensional. The jokes started to seem like they were predictably skimming off the single facet of a character's personality. Benny's the horny one. Johnny's the violent one. Mikey's the--well, I'm not sure what Mikey is. He doesn't really draw a whole lot of awareness. More on this later.

Maybe the reason I didn't mind the characterization as much as I normally might have is because they seemed to fit the idea of boy bands like a glove. Every boy band seemed to have members with different personae, and these personae were pretty one-dimensional. JT was the cool one. Nick was the sweet one. Etc. But I did notice the issue, so just letting you know.

The real issue I have with character is motivation. Good old-fashioned story logic. I didn't really see a reason for Mikey to reunite the band. I mean, sure, he just lost his job, but if he is working a shit job like Burger Queen, he must have been in pretty dire straits before that. The idea of him just up and deciding to reunite a group of people he hasn't even thought about for 27 years just felt false to me. Also, both Benny and Johnny had pretty unimpressive reasons for jumping in once again.

Still on the subject of motivation, I don't understand why Janet would try so hard to quash the KotB. Sure, I guess she would lose political capital if it became generally known that her husband was hanging out with a gigolo and a biker. To that end, she might want to keep the KotB playing in bars and junior high proms where they don't attract much attention. But would she really risk Brewster getting caught sabotaging them? Not to mention casting her husband as mentally disabled (which could obviously be easily disproven). And then, on top of all that, having the LAPD charge into a junior high prom and arrest her husband with three of the most questionable associates in LA. That's some pretty heavy political fallout. I just have difficulty buying the motivations for her as an antagonist.

The next major issue is conflict. Simply put, everything seems too easy for the KotB. Mikey sets out to recruit he guys back to the band and succeeds with hardly a hitch. The band is generally all in agreement, and rarely has any kind of an internal squabble lasting more than one or two pages. I keep expecting tension to rise and the band to be on the verge of breaking up again, but it never happens. No conflict within the band.

Outside the band, the situation is little better. They bounce around doing gigs at bars and retirement homes, gaining popularity and interest as they go. Brewster's attempts at sabotage are minor roadblocks at best. The worst it gets is when Johnny gets his ass kicked by a 14-year-old ninja girl and gets the whole band locked in prison. At which point an MTV lawyer shows up out of the blue, bails them out and puts them up as the closing act on MTV's awards show, even though their only experience since reformation has been larval gigs characterized by extreme technical snafus. This would never happen.

The conflict in the internal world of the characters is almost non-existent. Mikey, Benny, and Johnny have no real internal issues that need working through. The only one who has an arc is Davey, and Davey's arc seems to be a relatively easy one (particularly since Janet is such a bitch it's hard to see why he would have married her in the first place.)

This brings me to what I think is the central issue of the screenplay. You picked the wrong main character. Mikey is flat out not protagonist material. Davey should be your main character, for the following reasons:

1) Internal conflict and arc. Davey's the only one who has one and it's a good one. He wants to get his balls back (good choice of arc, btw, it echoes the central theme of the script. Hell, even the title of the script, The Boys Are Back, seems suited to this particular arc).

2) External conflict. Janet's quarrel is with Davey. If Mikey is your main character, he fights Janet through Davey. Sure, they have competing goals, so it sort of works, but your script will be better with a direct conflict rather than one performed by proxy.

3) Love interest. The hot producer hooks up with Davey. We want our main character to get the girl. Stars want to play the character who gets the girl. And getting the girl is an important part of Davey's arc.

4) Motivation. Davey is the only one with the motivation to reunite the band. As an added bonus it makes for more conflict because he has to convince the other three to join the band, and deal with the fact that none of them trust him because he let Janet talk him into quitting in the first place.

That's it for conflict. I had (sort of) an issue with some of the jokes. Although you generally have a There's Something About Mary sort of humor, sometimes jokes just flat out do not go far enough (like when Johnny swigs the urine in the bar--we've seen it before), and sometimes the jokes don't seem to be paid off at all (the Jets themselves. I expected them to come back, and not just as roadies in one little vignette. I expected them to impact the plot).

But other than that, the jokes are fresh and hilarious. It fulfills the most important job of a comedy, which is to make its audience laugh. It draws on a pretty good tapestry of characters I care about (with whom I have only a few minor quibbles). It is admirably structured and well-written but it desperately needs a conflict tune-up and some thought about the story logic. Then it should be ready to shop around.

Concept: Average
Characters: Average
Dialogue: Average
Story: Average
Structure: Good
Overall: Average

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