friday, december 22

Teevee.org’s review of Stephen King’s The Langoliers:

“The Langoliers” originally disgraced the ABC television network back in 1995. It has recently popped up repeatedly on the Sci-Fi Channel, apparently transferred there in a special magnetic field container since the rancorous stench of failure and decay that permeates every frame of this monstrosity must devour normal plastic videotape boxes like so much 18-molar sulfuric acid.

To be honest, TV critics salivate over opportunities such as “The Langoliers” like a fat man at a fudge convention. After all, there are only so many columns to write about how spunky Ally’s new man is. Every now and then we like to sink our teeth into a steaming heap of awful and have at it. Thankfully, “The Langoliers” is an all-you-can-eat buffet of wretchedness.

Watching “The Langoliers” was a torturous endeavor at best, I did learn a few things:

  • Meego is not the most embarrassing role of Bronson Pinchot’s career. He does, however, deliver the golden moment of “The Langoliers” when he’s beaten to a bloody pulp by a toaster.
  • Stephen King is apparently letting Mesopatamian Hallmark card writers adapt his books for television.
  • There really is such a thing as a low-rent Corey Feldman.

Forget mildly. The truth is that every single actor in “The Langoliers” believes that subtlety is a new type of Lexus. This isn’t just ham-fisted scenery chewing, this is flat-out grazing. [Patricia] Wettig, who does for acting what Ebola does for blood pressure, can’t even manage a convincing sleep let alone emotion that doesn’t make Regis look like Steven Wright.

The eight-year old blind girl knows two facial expressions: vacuous and drooling. Why is it that being disabled in the movies automatically makes you the most obnoxious human being within a fifty-mile radius?

The film’s dialogue flows like it was translated from its original Sumerian by first-graders and caresses the ear like Fran Drescher with a hacking cough.


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