I wasn’t a huge fan of the show when I was a kid, but as the King of TV, I recognize the cultural impact it had on my generation and me and as an adult, the nostalgia it brings is of high quality. So as you might expect, I had high hopes.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the show when I was a kid, but as the King of TV, I recognize the cultural impact it had on my generation and me and as an adult, the nostalgia it brings is of high quality. So as you might expect, I had high hopes.
The A-Team movie is just like an episode of the TV show… a really shitty episode of the TV show.
As the film began, I was excited to see my old friends Hannibal, Face, B.A and Murdock embark on their latest mission. Unfortunately, I was still waiting for that mission to begin forty-five minutes later. It took so long for the plot of this film to actually take hold that I had a hard time figuring out what it was about.
Was it an origin story for the crack commando team? Was it a continuation of what the TV show gave us? Was it just a big budget version of a script that Steven J. Cannell never got around to producing? In any event, what ended up on screen was a pathetic mess of a script that disgraced a classic TV show.
The saddest part of the film was the waste of awesome talent. I’ve mentioned many times how Bradley Cooper was a brilliant choice to play Face. Hell, he should play Dirk Benedict in “A Career Built on a Smile: The Dirk Benedict Story.” He more than rose to the challenge of the role.
Sharlto Copley played Murdock with the right amount of manic humor and technical expertise to allow him to pull off the role quite well. I didn’t see a trace of the dude from District Nine and my date didn’t even recognize him.
Rampage Jackson did much better than I expected him too and his fear of flying and repartee with Murdock made me laugh more than once, although, I would have liked to hear him point out more crazy fools and/or make it clear how he pities them.
I didn’t expect much from Jessica Biel except to be hot and while a shoehorned bikini scene would have been welcomed by me, she did her best.
Unfortunately, Liam Neeson was a complete snore. Not only did he play his role with a total lack of character, he did nothing to explain to us why he was the great soldier and leader, he was constantly telling us he was. To make matters worse, the only disguise he wore in the entire movie was when he dies his hair black. I guess if he was trying to look like the doctor from Nell, it worked. It’s not like I expected him to wear a crappy monster costume, but I think the audience deserved a better disguise than the one that comes in a $6.00 box of Clairol natural brown.
As for Joe Carnahan, he was the wrong choice to direct this movie. I loved Narc, but his gritty style of directing totally went against what the A-Team was all about; a fun, group of guys, who pity fools, adore well-assembled plans and only shoot the ground in front of the bad guys.
The worst insult for me was having the classic A- Team van introduced almost immediately and then destroyed ten minutes later. It boldly set the tone for the movie’s failure to deliver anything that the fans were hoping to see.
In the end, there were the obligatory cameos and a pretty clever mention of Reginald Barclay that made me happy, but I have to admit that the best part of this movie was the fact that I snuck into it after paying to see Get Him to the Greek.
—Paul Goebel
