MOVIE REVIEW

'American Cannibal' documents a fake pitch about contestants being starved on an island. The spirit is all too real.

By Michael Ordoña, Special to The Times

Audiences probably often wonder when the reality genre is finally going to eat itself. "American Cannibal" stands ready for that moment with a bib and vinegar.

The filmmakers swear up and down this is a bona fide documentary, albeit a clearly manipulated one (a la the reality shows it concerns), that follows two writers as they try to pitch their way into television careers. They find themselves allied with a "porn PR man" who agrees to fund something they meant as a joke — an unscripted series in which contestants are placed on an island and starved, then led to believe they've been abandoned.

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The show is intended to parade the contestants' desperate descent into savagery, but the documentary is really about the writers' fall. In one sense, it's about how an artist becomes a pornographer — in this case, the reality-TV porn of schadenfreude.

It's meta-meta theater; it's directed reality about the reality of the biz behind reality shows. Television figures such as "The Daily Show" co-creator Lizz Winstead are interviewed: "If the lowest common denominator was a muscle, it could kick the … out of everything else."

The real savagery is in the satire, coldly measuring the lengths to which contestants might go and the depths to which the protagonists sink.

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"American Cannibal." MPAA rating: Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes. Exclusively at Laemmle's Grande, 345 S. Figueroa St., L.A. (213) 617-0268.