Reclaiming the Vast Wasteland

Made-from-TV movies aren't always cinematic eyesores.

Nick Gillespie from the October 1994 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

This same kind of tenuous connection between source and movie holds true for TV-based films. The real question to ask of the TV-based movies is the one that should be asked of any cinematic adaptation: Are they any good as movies? The short answer is the same as it is for any other sort of movie source. Some of them are; most of them aren't.

Not surprisingly, the most successful TV-based movies are more than mere reruns playing out on the big screen. As with novels and plays, the results are best when TV shows are actively made new for the big screen by updating and revising characters, plots, and themes. This is readily apparent when looking at two recent TV-based movies that were both commercially successful and well-received by critics (even Corliss concedes they are "good"). While it seems unlikely that either The Fugitive or Addams Family Values is destined for classic status, both movies showcase how TV-based movies can succeed fully as motion pictures.

Perhaps the most remarkable achievement of the big-screen Fugitive is the way it took a picaresque source (the Fugitive series lasted four years) and reshaped it into a tightly knit plot that is fully resolved in two hours. The one-armed man's murder of Dr. Richard Kimble's wife structured the TV show by giving the falsely accused Kimble license to wander the country and have various adventures while simultaneously evading police and searching for his wife's killer. The episodic nature of the series dictated that Kimble never actually resolve his situation; the pleasure of viewing was tied to seeing how, week after week, events conspired to keep that from happening.

For the film version to succeed, however, the opposite held true: If the action is not resolved by the movie's end, the viewer feels cheated. The movie achieved its closure by inventing an evil pharmaceutical cabal that is responsible for the plot's catalyst--the murder of Kimble's wife--and is brought to justice in the final reel. (In the TV show, the murder is ultimately found out to be a random act of violence, committed during a burglary.)

Similarly, The Fugitive's main characters are remade for the big screen. Since the movie compresses events, Harrison Ford's Kimble is by turns flustered, disoriented, and rage- filled. Since the experience of being chased is new to the filmic Kimble, there is a greater sense of urgency and terror. In the TV show's two-part finale, by contrast, David Janssen's Kimble, understandably worn out by four years of false leads, false hopes, and false endings, is almost devoid of any affect.

And, in place of Barry Morse's brooding, relentless police lieutenant who becomes personally consumed by his search for Kimble, Tommy Lee Jones's U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard is a by-the-book tactician who values detached procedure over all else (a comforting thought in a post-Rodney King world). The spectacular train-wreck and waterfall sequences exploit film's panoramic potential to its fullest.

For its part, Addams Family Values remains true to the perverse spirit of both its TV and cartoon predecessors while putting a very contemporary, very wicked spin on the 1992 Republican national convention theme. Just-married Fester's gold-digging bride cuts off all contact with the family, the better to carry out her plan to kill him for his inheritance. But it turns out that the Addamses are so close-knit a clan that the bad relations manifest themselves in a peculiar condition afflicting Morticia and Gomez's newborn son Pubert. The baby's jet-black hair suddenly turns into curly blond locks, and his pallid complexion is replaced by rosy cheeks. If a reconciliation is not quick in coming, the child will be condemned to go through life looking like an All-American boy.

While that sort of comic inversion of normal expectations was central to the series' humor, it takes on an added dimension in our contemporary world where norms can no longer be taken for granted. Underlying the movie is the truth that the Addamses cherish the institution of the family above all else. (When asked if his newborn is a boy or a girl, Gomez proudly blurts out, "It's an Addams!".) But what remains unclear is whether they value the family in spite of their oddness or because of their oddness. The same sense of indeterminate irony extends to the relentlessly deadpan cast, particularly Raul Julia as Gomez, Anjelica Huston as Morticia, and Christopher Lloyd as Fester. It is difficult to know whether something is a straight line or a punch line (more than the movie's title, it seems, recalls the Republican convention).

The movie also manages to simultaneously participate in and lampoon political correctness in a hilarious summer-camp pageant sequence in which Wednesday and Pugsly, dressed as Indians, attack campers dressed as Pilgrims. Like The Fugitive, Values is shot with the big screen in mind, featuring a richly textured, cavernous mansion setting and a climax in which Pubert is slung about the house--and the Earth's atmosphere--with a reckless abandon that would have been lost on the small screen.

Both movies, in other words, succeed because they have been extensively refashioned with the big screen and a new audience in mind. While there's little doubt that any number of painfully insipid, unwatchable TV-inspired flicks are yet to come, it is worth remembering that the tube is merely one source among many. Far from being a sign of creative exhaustion, the embrace of TV may provide film makers with the basis of some very entertaining movies.

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