Subj : Re: Serenity: My Thoughtful Review To : alt.tv.farscape From : \ Date : Sat Oct 08 2005 18:02:17 From Newsgroup: alt.tv.farscape Quietly we read , unable to contain our credulity we realized that Jim Larson said this: >I still wasn't feeling quite up for it yesterday, so we caught an early >showing today. My little treat for not whining excessively while an infection >slowly drains into my mouth: mmmmmmmbiohazardmmmmmm > >Anyway, here's my reviw: > >OH.MY.GOD.THAT.FUCKING.ROCKED. > Well I've just seen Serenity based on the strength of word of mouth going around this newsgroup. I don't see many films ... the last one I saw was the Revenge of the Sith. I must admit I found Serenity rather cliched in the way most movies that come out these day are. They are made for kids (witness the number of kids in the cinema today compared to the small number of adults and even a smattering of old age pensioners). The film seemed to me to be based on the oldest cinema clicho, that the only people who can save the world are outlaws with a strong sense of social responsibility. Why so many films are based on this premise I have no idea because most true life outlaws are just in it for what they can get out of it for themselves. The old adage "There is no honour among thieves" is true in my experience yet Hollywood keeps churning out films that they would have us believe the opposite is true. Maybe I'm too old to see much novelty in new films but making kids believe that you have to step outside the law to do something right is just teenage rebellion taken to an extreme conclusion and has nothing to do with adult life as I know it. The special effects were OK but then these days the standard is pretty high anyway and most people just seem to take them for granted. My other grip about the film is why did they cast as the main character somebody with a thick Southern accent. He was very witty when you could hear and understand what he was saying but for me that was about 65% of the time. I'm sure a lot of the film was lost on me because of that (but then I could follow the path from one 'plosion to the next so I suppose that is all you can expect from the average filmgoer these days.) As usual a lot of science was ignored. We are so used to films in which things don't float around in space that even in a low tech craft which they flew in this there is no weightlessness in space. All that clutter on board the ship should have been up near the ceiling. Also would all these many planets be temperate? Wouldn't some be hot and some be cold? Its funny how they all looked like California. I didn't like the idea of the Reevers either. How could a homicidal maniac, or a group of them, be sufficiently orderly to operate a fleet of spacecraft? On the whole I'm really not surprised this subject failed as a TV program and I'm amazed it was made into a film. The audience in the cinema I was in seemed quite mature as the teenagers watched Goal and the preteens watched the Wallace and Gromit film. The good parts were River and the English accented baddie. Sadly they were secondary considerations as were most of the rest of the cast. My rating ... 4/10. -- Bill Jillians .