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Rating: 3 stars

All movies seen on 08/29/2007

View on: IMDb | TMDb

Saved by the Bell: Wedding in Las Vegas (1994)

Directed by Jeff Melman

Comedy | Comedy

Overview

In this conclusion of the long running series it finally happens: Kelly and Zack will marry. Zack’s parents are against the early commitment and Kelly’s parents can’t afford it, so only the gang travels to Las Vegas for the wedding. However, before the wedding can happen, they have to live through many adventures, including Zack losing his hard earned money, Kelly becoming jealous and Slater being chased by mobsters.

Rated NR | Length 90 minutes

Actors

Mark-Paul Gosselaar | Tiffani Thiessen | Mario López | Dustin Diamond | Lark Voorhies | Dennis Haskins | Elizabeth Berkley | Bob Golic | Kiersten Warren | Gilbert Gottfried | Melody Rogers

Viewing History (seen 1 time)

Viewing Notes

his originally appeared as a review for PopSyndicate.com in 2007.

Renew your love for the Zack Attack

So you’ve got all of the original class Saved by the Bell seasons on DVD, as well as The College Years. For all this time, you’ve been missing two things: the TV movies Hawaiian Style and Wedding in Las Vegas. Good news: Lions Gate has packed them both into one volume! Now all you’re missing is Good Morning, Miss Bliss.

The show was extremely successful in the early 1990s and it was the semi-adult fare that my generation grew up with, from middle school through college. It helped renew a more youthful interest in NBC and aided in their catapult to dominance in 1994 when my generation latched onto youth-targeted shows like Friends. The show was so successful that NBC decided in 1992 to launch a primetime tv movie and in 1994, the series was wrapped with another tv movie featuring the wedding of Kelly and Zack.

In 1994, the Bayside class of 1993 graduated to their own prime-time series and dropped out in February out due to low ratings. However, one nagging series issue (aside from Tori going missing at graduation) remained unresolved: what would happen to Kelly and Zack? That problem was solved with the 1994 special Wedding in Las Vegas, which closed out the lives of the characters until we hopefully get some sort of reunion special.

The central predicament this time is, of course, Zack and Kelly’s wedding, but of course complications ensue. Zack is dealing with parental issues, as his father refuses to support his marriage and his mother is a doormat who won’t go against Mr. Morris. Then, they all have trouble getting to Vegas. A meaty man with a shining for Lisa helps fix her car when she and Lisa get stuck in the desert (Jessie is absent until the very end). The boys, in Slater’s Explorer, get arrested when Hicktown police suspect it’s a stolen vehicle and the only way they get out is by bribing the sheriff with Zack’s entire wedding savings. The boys must then find a way to make that money back, which leads to Zack and Screech becoming male escorts and later earning the wrath of the Mafia because of a girl Slater is obsessed with. In the end, Zack and co. escape the Mafia and make it to their wedding with Zack’s parents endorsement and Jessie stumbling into the ceremony.

If Hawaiian Style was a bigger budget Bell episode, Wedding in Las Vegas is a legitimate TV movie. It looks to have been shot on 35mm film, which instantly lends a bit more credibility in what is in reality a more credible film. The real complaint is the soundtrack, which sounds like a poor man’s Michael McDonnell. I think we call that homeless. We even get musical montages set to saxaphone!

Yes, the cast was older, wiser, and they were barely more experienced. Nonetheless the acting was as good as we ever got from Saved by the Bell, especially at the beginning with Zack’s parental conflict. Gosselaar always was the show’s best actor.

Saved by the Bell is a show that left an indelible mark on Generation X that still rears its pretty head now and again. The plots were contrived, the jokes corny and the continuity errors numerous, but it helped a generation grow up. And it gave us the Zack Attack.

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