This film sought to offer a heart-warming and endearing treatment of a group of young actors thrust into the limelight in their teens. While the young cast was earnest in carrying out the film's intention, the overall effect seemed pretentious.

The film failed to truly penetrate the lives of the young actors to appreciate both the fame they achieved and the pressures they were under at such a young age.

Rarely was there a scene that portrayed the youngsters letting the mask down to reveal their personal lives. The strongest character development was that of Dustin, from whose perspective we take in this experience.

The best part of the film was the rehearsal scenes and the live actioin filming of the vignettes. Those scenes captured how the phenomenon of reality television was unfolding in the late twentieth century.

I don't even know where to begin with this film. I don't even know why they bothered making it. Lifetime is the home of bad, bad TV movies but this one takes the cake of stuff I've seen lately. I admit I was actually excited about this. I am an adult who grew up absolutely LOVING Saved By The Bell. Kelly was the love of my young life, Zack was my idol, Screech was my best friend...you get the drift. I thought initially it was very smart of Lifetime to explore this show and what it legitimately did for Television. I understand there were some very dramatic things that happened behind the scenes so this could have been very interesting. It is a colossal horrible mess. The casting is the only thing they didn't screw up because it was okay (most will disagree with me) but the story they tell is ridiculous. Because it is Unauthorized they make up sets that look nothing like the actual ones, stories and scripts that never happened and events that were very unlikely. I would have rather watched a documentary about the making of the show then watch them fake their way through this crap. Despite being so terrible I sat there and watched it and maybe because I wanted it to be so good and maybe because I loved Saved By The Bell so much...somehow I found some semblance of redemption in it and was okay with wasting an hour and a half on it.

Now don't get me wrong when I said the casting was okay. The casting is JUST okay. The kids were decent, they looked the part and I think if they had a script that was even okay that they too would have done alright. This script could have been written by monkeys on typewriters. Sam Kindseth shows some talent and some genuine promise as Dustin Diamond/Screech. He actually does his best to show some emotion. I actually thought Dylan Everett did a decent job as Mark-Paul Gosselaar. Much like Kindseth, he tried his best given the material. He almost seemed like he had enough chemistry to carry the movie much like Gosselaar carried Saved By The Bell. Julian Works tried very hard as Mario Lopez but wasn't very well cast. Still he was okay and the chemistry with him and the other cast members were decent. Tiera Skovbye, Alyssa Lynch and Taylor Russell were okay but very underused and were really only there to fulfil the purpose of being those characters and get very little depth. Same could be said for Ken Tremblett who seemed to really nail the Dennis Haskins role in the two or three scenes they actually showed him.

In order for this film to work, they needed a script that truly captured what this show meant to pre-teens and to Television in general. They also needed a cast that had the sort of chemistry that the actual cast had twenty plus years ago. This film had neither of those things. This was slapped together to make a couple of books and move on. Director Jason Lapeyre has virtually no experience behind the camera and Ron McGee, who has written a lot of stuff (most of it looks like garbage) should stop writing. I blame him for the majority of why this didn't work at all. Why they would put the point of view to Dustin Diamond's character is beyond me and they never really touch on any of the important moments in the shows history. Maybe the show doesn't need a behind the scenes film but I still think it could have been done right. It wasn't. Its bad. Unless you're a true die hard fan like me, you won't find much reason to watch this. And if you do...be warned. 4.5/10

There's been a lot of criticism for this TV movie on review sites. It is corny, it is sugary and it does miss some of the seedier parts of Dustin Diamond's book.

I read Dustin Diamond's book "Behind The Bell" on which this TV Movie is based several years before this film was even made. It was incredibly difficult to obtain a physical copy so I bought the eBook instead. The book was controversial at the time and arguably libellous in places. The story goes Dustin Diamond wanted to publish a "tell all" book about the Saved By The Bell cast. The book was said to be co-written with the aid of a ghostwriter and also parts were made-up or exaggerated by him.

With this being PG rated it totally glosses over the seedier aspects of the book like: sex amongst cast members, like some of the drug taking, like the dressing room orgies and Dustin's infamous trips to Disney World. If you believe the book. The film is basically a nostalgia piece and fairly flattering to the cast. I can't imagine them being that offended by this film unlike the book. The film takes place in 1989 after "Good Morning, Miss Bliss" gets cancelled and part of the cast are reunited for the Saved by the Bell pilot. The film missed out Lark Voorhees was in this series implying Saved by the Bell was her big break. Dustin Diamond was the youngest cast member, but it also ignored that he was a child actor with substantial acting experience compared to most of the cast.

Other omissions include Dennis Haskins (Mr Belding) not really featuring despite being a major cast member, I think Dustin said Corey Feldman used to visit the set which was missing, the two TV specials: Hawaiian Style and Wedding in Las Vegas were not mentioned and neither was long-running, The New Class which ran for 7 years. I would have liked to have heard more about Peter Engel who was considered a sort-of surrogate father to some of the cast and also that apart from "Hang Time" he never managed to have another big hit in TV (so far).

So it is corny fun much like Saved By The Bell itself and there are several glaring omissions, probably due to libel or inaccuracy. This means it sort of feels shallow. I was a big fan of SBTB and like a lot of people of my age it was a part of my childhood. I do not think this is a great film. The cast do their best with a limited script and all look the part. At 85 minutes it is also really skinny in terms of content, given it is telling 3+ years in that time. The soundtrack is also pretty decent. See it for the nostalgia rather than the drama.