[No Worries, No Spoilers]

Don't cry for me Minneapolis, but late last night I had to work. I had to go help a friend preview the freshly-delivered reel of 'Serenity' the day before its release. The worst part is, I didn't even get paid for it.

As a kid, I watched every episode of the following crappy TV shows: Hart to Hart, Love Boat, Good Times, Fantasy Island, The Dukes Of Hazzard, What's Happening, Riptide, Simon and Simon...

But No More. TV is not free. It takes time away from other things I would rather be doing (Music, writing, posting to the blog...) Ever since Xena and The X-Files ended their seasons several years ago, I have not watched more than a few hours total of television. I have never watched Seinfeld, Friends, Survivor or COPS. I did watch an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, and it was OK, but laugh tracks annoy the hell out of me, almost as much as "reality" TV.

Therefore, I surprised myself when I accidently caught the premere of Firefly, and enjoyed it enough to watch it the following week. I don't recall how many episodes I watched before they moved the time slot to some bizarre timeslot, (I think it was 3AM on Wednesday mornings) and I was bummed, but not enough to change my viewing habits or record the shows. I might have seen five or six episodes total, before the network cancelled the show.

Firefly should not have been cancelled. It is a fresh perspective that blows the doors off of Star Trek and all of its cash-in-clones.

Every character in Firefly is more interesting and more believable, and has more depth than any character from any Star Trek show or movie, with the exception of Spock. (Allright, the character Q was interesting for one episode...)

The mix of Old West meets High Tech meets Asian Culture is a great idea, and well done. Finally, we have a group who do NOT wear clean-pressed and startched Federation uniforms. They carry handguns, not phasers. They get into fistfights. They don't have transporters, or clean plastic hallways with running lights. They don't have and endless supply of dilithium crystals. They use ladders, not elevators. They can't just say "Computer, Earl Grey: Hot" and "Computer, Beam Me Up" and "Computer, Wipe My Ass For Me". They actually delivered cattle to an outer-rim planet, fercrissakes. They take any job they can get to keep gas in the tank and food on the table.

A Fresh, Unique and Interesting variation of the Sci-Fi theme, with interesting characters, having interesting dialog throughout interesting plots in an interesting world.

Did I mention that it was Interesting?

Did I mention it was Cancelled?

The movie Serenity remains faithful to the TV show, and finishes the season (although it is not necessary to have seen the series, it helps) It has all of the great elements of the TV show. The story is well written, it is even better if you know the story, and already have the questions in your head ("What happened to River?" "Why does the Federation want her back so badly?"). The dialog is great, plenty of quotable one-liners, which I really enjoy. The SFX go without saying, so I won't say. The music is an odd combination of Spanish/Western/Asian/Classical mostly on Acoustic guitar; very fitting to the movie, and very NOT Linkin Park.

I had high expectations for this movie, and was not disappointed. It is a must-see for any sci-fi fan. I really hope this teaches the network not to move the time slots of new a series, and show them out of order. Don't put them up against the Super Bowl, and them pull them because the numbers were low that day. I suspect that the popularity of this movie could prompt the TV series to be returned to us.


Blog on,
-C

Labels: movie reviews