All Reviews

Million dollar idea in need of some serious retooling. That is my initial thought on this script. One of the reasons I decided to take on your script swap was because your concept was beyond intriguing. This idea will have people begging to buy into it, if you can dig into it and do some serious rewriting.


Again the concepts of your main characters are smart and innovative, they are highly castable. But they lack authentic voices and often times you have them acting in ways that are in direct opposition to the concept you have built for them.


I think your jungle setting juxtaposed with the urban jungle is brilliant. There are so many possibilities that need to be explored.


There were times the dialogue worked but often times it felt very “talking head”. When your story arc wandered to some tangent plot point I felt that we lost the momentum of the pacing.


Many, many typo’s made this a tough read. I can never find my own typos so I do two things, I let my script software read my script to me and I listen for the things that sound wrong, and then once I get all the typos I can that way I find a good friend who owes me a favor to red pen my script. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about on pg 7 one of your action/descriptions reads: “Dave shakes his head as he though he’s made the connection….” There’s an extra word in that line. Or pg 68 Ted says: “When you’re sober, Ted, anything’s possible.” I think you meant that to be “When you’re sober, Cat….” These bump the reader out of the script and make the pace drag.


But the biggest problem is focus. Whose story is this? Who’s the bad guy? You’ve got the killer concept, you’ve teased us with the hint of a stellar story, now get back in and retool this thing until it’s razor sharp gold.


I know that this might seem really harsh but the good news is you really are onto something. I’d like to offer some suggestions for your next rewrite if I can.


1. Figure out whose story this is. I think you want it to be Cat’s story but he doesn’t hold our focus very well as written. Can you start us off with Cat looking like a hero? You told us about an incident on the river but you don’t show it (cardinal rule of screen writing: show don’t tell). Scripts should always open with a bang, what better bang can you get than the “Celebrity Survivalist” saving his poor nearly drowned camera man. Then after the big action hero rescue scene hit us with what Cat did to actually cause the near drowning. Maybe it’s the editor that we see in the second scene trying to figure out how to piece the footage together so Cat doesn’t look like an idiot. Then hit us with another Cat on location scene and an even bigger screw up. That’s when we need to have the big-wigs start to talk. Now take us out to Cats adoring public with a public appearance/ demonstration that goes horribly wrong (maybe he sets Comic Con on fire). What I’m trying to say is we need to have a reason to want to take this journey with him.


2. Ted is probably a more defined character than Cat so he’s probably good for right now. Anne is okay but you could bulk her character motivations up a little bit more. You kind of give us the bullet of why she’s really here when the natives find her bag. I think you can provide more subtle hints to her real motives earlier on in the script or change her motives altogether (see # 4).


3. Too many big-wigs to keep track of and since many of them don’t play a huge role in the script they tend to get lost. I had to go back and figure out who Larry is. If you need all these guys to make the story work, think about giving them more distinct personalities and names.


4. I was expecting a different twist at the end. I don’t know that you teased the Uncle enough for him to play that big a part in the end. It would mean a huge rewrite but my thoughts were, what if we the reader/viewer weren’t let in on the “Cat lost in the Wild” set up by the network plot. What if we just see the plane go down and think it’s just an accident and it’s not until the third act that we realize a couple of network guys set the whole thing up for ratings. It’s a little bit of a familiar set-up but then again a “little familiar” isn’t a bad thing. It helps the audience feel invested in the story. Maybe Anne instead of being an eco-terrorist is a producer that’s taking over the show, Teds not in on it so he feels betrayed when he eventually finds out. I also wonder what would happen if when things go haywire, the big-wigs have to fly to the Amazon to try and salvage the show.


5. I personally think this would be a much funnier script if you lose the drunk aspect and just make Cat bad at the survival stuff and a just a general ass. I’d prefer to see Cat be the good looking guy in front of the camera that has no idea what he’s doing and Ted be the sort of rough looking guy that actually is the true survivalist, but he’s stuck behind the camera because he’s not handsome. Ted would do all the work but get none of the credit. If Cat doesn’t’ know what he’s doing in the beginning and ends up saving the day then his arc is more interesting.


6. I think Scott can still be out to kill Cat but he needs to act alone and keep it hiden from the other big-wigs that are just trying to revive the show. Maybe we see him cause bad things to happen on Cat’s journey and we think they’re accidents but as we get to the end we hear about his wife sleeping with Cat and we realize that the accidents that happened were part of a plan that Scott put in place to try and kill Cat.


7. Scrub some of your dialogue. You have a lot of places where you have the same info written in a couple different places. In real life you might say something over and over again for emphasis but in a script you have to be more frugal with your words.


That’s all can think of right now. I might have more later. If I do I’ll send that to you via studio mail. If you have any questions please let me know.


I know it seems like I tore your script apart but I honestly wouldn’t have taken the time to do that if I didn’t believe this script has a huge future.

I enjoyed the read and loved the characters in it. I laughed at times and loved how Cat randomly switched from one accent to another.

I only caught about 4 typos, but I may not be the best person to listen to about Typos. I also (for some reason) pictured robert downey jr as cat when I read the story. I can see him doing that role well.

All in all I like it. it seems well put together. Im no pro and am just starting so i wont be able to give you a MILE long review like some others will, but I truly think you've got a winner! Lets hope the people who count think so to.

This was really funny and had a lot of twists and turns. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for an original funny comedy. I could easily see this as a movie. You did a great job.

Cat Dingas Survives the Wild is a fun and original take on the lost in the jungle story. It follows the journey of Cat Dingas a wilderness survivalist made famous by his hit television show. But years of Hollywood have made him soft, so his show’s executive producer decides to turn the tables on him and try to see if he still has what it takes to survive in the jungle. He decides to play a “prank” on Dingas by having him taken off the planned route therefore forcing Cat Dingas to truly survive in the jungle. Out in the wild with only his cameraman sans equipment, withdrawals from his untreated alcoholism and a woman they met on the plane, they make their way through the thick of the jungle. Will they come out of the jungle unscathed? or at all?

I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed reading this screenplay. I thought the dialogue was crisp and witty. I couldn’t wait to read what Cat was going to say next. When I read Cat, I couldn’t help but think Danny McBride in this role. It rings of him. The other characters had their own identity also and I had no trouble identifying them. One mention here be. careful with parentheticals. Never put actions in parentheticals it can be distracting to the reader and not proper formatting.

With these pluses, there are some areas that I feel can be worked on. First I felt the first Act ran a little long. There was a bit too much setup for Scott with not enough payoff in the end. Also, I felt that the story line with Scott was very disconnected from the main storyline. I understand Scotts motives for doing what he did, but I don’t think that the execution is intertwined enough with the main storyline. Also the confession in the end with Scott seemed a little anticlimactic.

I think that there should be a scene, before Cat and Co go on the big mission, where Scott confronts Cat and the battle lines are more clearly drawn between them. Currently Cat has no idea that Scott is even his enemy. Cat never finds out (at least on screen) what Scott did. If you were to take the Scott role out, the story would not change.

I like the interaction of Cat and crew in the jungle, But I had a little trouble identifying who is the true protagonist. I know the screenplay is named *Cat Dingas* survives the wild… But I can’t help but think that Ted is the true hero here. If this is so, then I would have liked to see him take a little more initiative with things. Instead of relying so much on Cat. En example of what to do could be, Have Cat start off more rusty than he would have thought and become more and more inebriated, or go the opposite and have is withdrawals from alcohol impact him to the point where Ted and Anne must carry Cat through the jungle and Ted must rely on what he has learned from Cat by filming him. This will allow Ted to take on the reluctant hero role etc. If I am incorrect on Ted being the hero and Cat is the true hero, then I would like for Cat to have a larger downfall. He needs to hit more of a rock bottom before he takes his hero status. I think a similar situation could happen to the point where Cat starts out on the wrong foot, gets them even more lost (if that’s possible) and becomes so useless with his alcoholism that Ted and Anne set off on their own because they would rather take the jungle on by themselves than to deal with Cat. This would then force Cat to dig deep down to find his true self and he then bounces back etc. Maybe have Ted and Anne get captured by the Aborigines on their own and Cat must come to their rescue. Of course this is all your call. I am just providing some points to think about.

In the end, I feel there should be more of an epilogue. What happens? Does Cat stay in the jungle? Does he continue with his show? Does he go to the celebrity survival show? Do the tapes of his adventure ever see the light of day on TV? What does Ted do? Does he become the eco terrorist with Anne? Does he go to Nat Geo? Does he Stay with Cat's show? Does Anne continue with her ways? Etc. The audience is going to want to know these things leaving the theater and it also provides a closer to the character's development. The way you have kind of leaves us wondering and a little disappointed.