HOLLYWOOD REPORTER Review: “The Road to Stardom With Missy Elliott”
Jan. 05, 2005
The Road to Stardom With Missy Elliott
By Erik Pedersen
Bottom line: “The Road to Stardom With Missy Elliott” has a solid chance to click with the network’s youthful demo.
8 p.m., Wed., Jan. 4
UPN
This 10-part UPN series doesn’t advance the “dramality” genre, but it doesn’t further besmirch it, either. More serious-minded than “American Idol” and “Popstars,” “The Road to Stardom With Missy Elliott” has a solid chance to click with the network’s youthful demo.
Thirteen aspiring rappers and singers are picked from a nationwide audition to go on tour with R&B star Missy Elliott. Ranging in age from 19 to a downright fatherly 29, the contestants endure an elimination process that will ultimately score one of them $100,000 and a deal for a single released by Elliott’s label.
The aspirants are a reasonably likable bunch in the premiere — though scenes from Episode 2 tease the growing conflicts among them. There’s lots of camaraderie to go with the underlying competitiveness and stated sexual tension. While it’s fairly easy to separate the have-its from the have-it-nots, their determination and heart are the keys. Rappers are judged for their look and originality as much as their delivery, and the singers — too often confusing soul with adding four or five syllables to each sung word — must show poise and personality.
The straight-shooting but hardly acerbic judges — manager Mona Scott, producer Dallas Austin and singer Teena Marie — offer genuine critiques rather than simply dressing down the performers for viewer amusement. That’s a major plus. Each week, they’ll nominate two candidates to lose their tour laminates; the lollipop-sucking Elliott then sends one of them home — and seems to enjoy doing so.
Add a villainous road manager and a truly crappy tour bus — “I’ve never experienced a smell like that in my life,” one contestant says — and there’s potential for a more realistic portrayal of the dues-paying struggle for fame than such shows usually offer. That alone makes “The Road to Stardom,” from Shapiro/Grodner Prods. in association with Monami Prods., worth the ride.