MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE VAN HELSING

UPDATE: That's right - an update! Usually when I get a new Foyeurism I'm officially done with it the moment it goes online. The way I've always figured it, it's out there, and much like the flaws of the films I so often poke fun at, the flaws in my writings (typos, grammatical errors [my mortal enemy is the comma, you know], misprints, factually inaccurate statements, et al - and lord knows there's been stuff I really should have gone back and corrected) are there for all to see and dissect. But if you've already read this month's Foyeurism then you read the preamble where I stated that I've been in the process of moving and hastily slapped this whole thing together. I was not kidding about how slapped together this Foyeurism was, literally a last minute affair. So much so that I forgot to even include a notice about changes coming to the site's message board. If you're already a member then you really need to go to the board and click on the "Big Changes For The Foywonder Message Board!" thread topping off the General Discussion forum. If you've never signed up or wanted to but had trouble doing so, you should also take note of this because the days of having to close registration or try to sort through the hundreds of spambots the site gets bombarded with every few days in order to find legit registrations is about to end. Members, please follow the instructions. Everyone else, rejoice in the impending demise of the Russian spambot onslaught!

And since I needed to add that notice to the introduction, I also decided to do a little tweaking: correcting a few typos, amending a few lines, adding some new lines, etc. While I was at it I even went so far as to toss in an extra review I just wrote of SCORPION KING 2: RISE OF A WARRIOR. Dig in!

Here’s the deal. You might remember a Foyeurism from last year where I mentioned in the preamble that there could be issues with the following month’s Foyeurism because I was planning to move that month. That move got put off for a year. I’m just finishing up the process of that move across town. Fortunately, I had time to slap some material together for a completely random Foyeurism. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to unpacking my massive collection of videos and DVDs. Good lord I have a lot of crappy films.

 

RANDOM ACTS OF FOYNESS

 

Given the way the direction this franchise's titles had been going I was hoping this third film would be titled THE MUMMY FOREVER. I so had my heart set on one day seeing THE MUMMY & ROBIN.

It's kind of funny that THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR would come out towards the tail end of the summer movie blockbuster season since much of it feels like it was composed from the parts of films we've seen already these past few months.

Set in China, an evil Chinese ruler seeks immortality along with an evil general; a heroic Chinese female warrior tries to stop him while falling for a young Caucasian hero, magic and kung fu abounds, and the film co-stars Jet Li. Hmm...

The supernatural villain must be stopped before he awakens an unstoppable supernatural army that'll conquer the world. Sound familiar?

Our tomb raiding heroes are on a globetrotting quest in search of archaeological wonders and battling militaristic villains seeking to employ paranormal forces for their ill-gotten gain. And the main hero of the previous two films is now assisted by his adult son. Where have I seen that before?

Yes; it's like Universal put THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM, HELLBOY 2, and INDIANA JONES into a blender and then dumped in some freshly squeezed Stephen Sommers man-milk to make a new Mummy Smoothie.

Thankfully, Stephen Sommers was not at the helm of this installment. Nonetheless, his legacy of stupidity is still felt from time to time. Brendan Fraser's first scene has him catching himself in the neck with a fishhook while attempting to fly fish; this is immediately followed by him taking a pratfall out of a tree. A Yeti knocks a guy through the air between two pillars that look like goal posts leading another Yeti to raise its arms like a football ref signaling the field goal to be good. A nefarious Chinese general seeking to restore China to glory following Japanese occupation of World War 2 and conquer the world in the process by bringing an ancient Chinese emperor back to life still needs a British woman to translate ancient Chinese text for him. That resurrected immortal emperor will have power over the elements and even gain the ability to transform into Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster's little brother and something that looks like a roided up version of one of the WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE Are creatures yet still he prefers to just walk around and fight using kung fu in his human form the majority of the time. The heroes immediately give aerial chase to the flying three-headed dragon even though it had been established that their plane and its pilot are over a day's journey away. And who can forget the scene involving a vomiting yak that exists solely so that someone can make the obvious joke, "The yak yakked!"

Pardon me, sir, but do you know where the UNDERWORLD 3 auditions are being held?

Know what happens when you direct a mega-bomb like STEALTH? You get saddled with Stephen Sommers sloppy thirds, that's what. If you think the villain in this movie is cursed then try being director Rob Cohen. Cohen gets a bad wrap for some of the crap that he's made but he's also the same guy who did DRAGON: THE BRUCE LEE STORY and the HBO movie THE RAT PACK. He's not a bad director at all; just one who I don't feel is at his best when he's making big dumb action flicks. However, I think Cohen's done a better job than Sommers; Cohen is far more disciplined a filmmaker than Sommers. Stephen Sommers strikes me as being like a variation of X-Men's Beast; the bigger the budget you give him the dumber he becomes.

Perhaps it can be chalked up to the power of low expectations or mental exhaustion from moving but I found THE MUMMY: TOMB OF THE DRAGON EMPEROR, though not a good movie by any conventional means, to be mildly watchable (up to a point) in an in-one-ear-and-out-the-other, use-once-and-dispose, Saturday matinee schlock sort of way. It offers virtually nothing by way of emotional attachment to anything you're watching on the screen yet I can't say I was ever too bored or annoyed as I was with the previous MUMMY movies, both of which I consider pimples on the ass of humanity. My tolerance for this sequel stems in part to it being nowhere near as aggressive in its idiocy as the previous two despite some moments already mentioned and a script that was otherwise mindless gibberish. I also found it rather depressing that a new Mummy movie would still prove more entertaining than a new Indiana Jones movie. Sadly, that say more about the quality of the latter than it does the former.

I have been a bit taken aback by the sheer amount of contempt that has been heaped upon this film particularly by people who speak fondly of the first two MUMMY movies (or the first one at least) which were far more contemptible in my opinion. MUMMY 3 is somehow too dumb, worst written, and doesn't feature enough non-stop action for some people's tastes? Really? The bar has already been set so low by this franchise I find it really hard to swallow that anyone could see this as a further falling off point. It's just more of the same minus the overwhelming sense of having your brain pummeled mercilessly by a filmmaker who uses motion pictures the same way a caveman uses a club.

Now where as the previous MUMMY sequel led to a prequel spin-off movie based on that film's new villain, part three more or less opens with its own capsulated prequel detailing the rise of the Dragon Emperor (Jet Li - wasn't he talking about retiring after FEARLESS?), his lust for conquering lands, his desire for Michelle Yeoh, and his quest for immortality. The last two result in him being cursed and transformed into a clay statue. The same fate even befell his massive army and even their horses; someone then took the time to bury them all for safe keeping even though the hope is that they're never unearthed. Why not just pick up a stick and start shattering them so there's never any chance of them coming back?

The Dragon Emperor's tomb is discovered in 1947 by college dropout turned tomb raider Alex O'Connell (the affably bland Luke Ford), the son of the Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz characters now an adult even he only looks about a decade younger than his parents.

Speaking of Rachel Weisz, like Stephen Sommers, she's long gone from this franchise. Unlike Stephen Sommers, it’s because she’s moved on to better material. Weep for G.I. JOE.

Replacing Weisz and replacing Weisz's poise with an often ungainly degree of overeagerness is Maria Bello, looking remarkably like a younger Sigourney Weaver with her now raven-hair and struggling with an odd British accent that sounds like a cross between Angela Lansbury and Katherine Hepburn. What an odd re-casting choice. Evelyn O'Connell is now a successful author of two pulp adventure novels titled THE MUMMY and THE MUMMY RETURNS - no doubt another case of the books being better than the movies.

Living the dull life of English aristocracy with doltish husband Alex, (Brendan Fraser, doing that special brand of overacting and yelling most of his lines as he so often does)…

Seriously, did we really need two dopey Brendan Fraser “ADD-venture” movies in one summer with him as a hapless explorer constantly imperiled by computer effects of varying quality? I'll still take this over his JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH even though that film had the extra added benefit of being 3-D. Anyone who ever tries watching that movie in 2-D is in for a really bad time.

The dragon Tiamat agreed to appear in the film but had to work for scale. (RIMSHOT!)

The O’Connell’s marriage is currently in a bit of a rut after having retired from fighting mummies and spying on behalf of the Allies during WW2. World War 2? Did we miss a movie in between? Universal must have decided to skip THE MUMMY: FURY OF THE MUMMY FUHRER in favor of making this Chinese follow-up.

Their boring life is once again given an adventurous spark when the British government asks them to return a rare gem smuggled out of China. So off to Shanghai they go to meet up with Evelyn's fraidy cat brother Jonathan (the always hammy John Hannah), who even though he'll repeatedly profess throughout the remainder of the film his intense disliking of mummies, he's gone and opened up an Egyptian-themed nightclub in Shanghai called Imhotep. This would be like Chief Brody from JAWS being revealed as the owner/operator of the water park in JAWS 3.

The O'Connell's meet up with their son and are not happy to find out what he's been up to. But soon enough they'll all be off on a brand new adventure when the gem revealed to contain magical resurrection properties that come in handy for bring non-mummified mummies back to life is stolen by a Chinese general played by Hong Kong movie veteran Anthony Wong.

In a more perfect world the more menacing Wong would have played the emperor instead of Jet Li. The Dragon Emperor is at his least threatening when he's just Jet Li playing Jet Li with an evil sneer.

Fortunately, the clay encrusted emperor is stuck in his cursed walking statue form for most of the movie, sort of like a man-sized version of Daimajin with a clay shell that can be shattered and reform. One nifty moment in particular will have him break his own face off and hurl it at Fraser as a weapon. He also has control over the elements giving him the ability to shoot flames and create ice spikes in the snow. I found the Dragon Emperor in this state to be a more interesting villain than the Arno Vosloo's Mummy or The Rock's Scorpion King.

Inframan is never around when you need him most

Funny how this MUMMY movie that uses the word “mummy” more than any other film doesn’t really have any mummies in it. The Dragon Emperor and his warriors are more like terra-cotta golems. That still doesn't stop the writers from working in the word "mummy" every place they could. Make it a drinking game; take a shot whenever someone makes a "mummy" comment. Better yet, yell back at the screen, "THEY'RE NOT MUMMIES!"

As the Dragon Emperor seeks to break his curse and resurrect his immortal army, standing in his way are the O'Connell's and friends, Michelle Yeoh as the also immortal one-time object of the emperor's desire responsible for his curse, and a pretty Chinese girl (Cantonese pop singer Isabelle Leong) also out to make sure the Dragon Emperor never rises again.

That poor girl, she gets so shafted during the finale that not only does she not get to take part in the ultimate battle with the Dragon Emperor, the resurrected father she never knew shows up briefly and the film never even allows her a moment for a family reunion. All this after Alex gave her a speech about how she shouldn't live her life on the sidelines. Talk about sarcasm.

That's because her primary purpose is to play love interest for Alex. It's rather depressing that the two of them have more chemistry than Fraser and Bello, so much more so I almost wish the film had left the two of them out altogether and just made this THE MUMMY: THE NEXT GENERATION.

Now I did write "up to a point" earlier. That point comes not long after the midway point where the whole film felt like it hit a crescendo with a big fight in the Himalayas that also involved heroic Yetis that look less like Abominable Snowmen and more like albino Lycans from another UNDERWORLD movie. Everything that came after that felt flat, perfunctory at best. Seas of clashing armies slamming into one another – been there; archers filling the sky with arrows – done that. Yet another movie where a magic knife that is the only thing that can stop the all powerful villain - seen the hell out of it. The film had been a leaky ship and now the boat was losing its ability to float. The already threadbare logic also runs out about this time. I mean an enormous army of terra cotta warriors so brittle a group of 1920's union breakers with ball bats could probably smash them to smithereens but if they cross the Great Wall of China they’ll instantly become indestructible. Let me double check IMDB to make sure Stephen Sommers didn't actually make this one after all.

And when your movie features a martial arts fight scene between Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh that only lasts about a 90-seconds and is mostly shot in slow motion close-up, sorry, you’ve done your audience a real disservice.

Since I'm already on the subject of MUMMY movies, are you aware that even its lousy spin-off THE SCORPION KING has now spawned a brand new sequel that should fit right in on DVD shelves next to BATS 2, ANACONDA 3, LOST BOYS: THE TRIBE, WARGAMES: THE DEAD CODE, and such upcoming DVD sequels as INTO THE BLUE 2, VACANCY 2, JOYRIDE 2, and - just announced - THE MARINE 2.

Can KULL THE CONQUEROR 2 be far behind?

The latest entry (this week) in the unnecessary direct-to-DVD sequel sweepstakes is SCORPION KING 2: RISE OF A WARRIOR, the prequel to a spin-off that was itself a prequel to a sequel. That’s Hollywood for you.

The Rock... Excuse me, Dwayne Johnson, had better things to do than return for a direct-to-DVD SCORPION KING sequel (assuming you consider a supporting role in Get Smart "better things") so taking over the role of Mathayus for this prequel is Michael Copon, a young actor who got his start as the Blue "Time Force" Power Ranger. I haven't seen a sword & sorcery movie set in ancient times with a lead actor who gave off this strong a surfer dude vibe since YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE.

Though down the most electrifying man in sports entertainment, the producers went back to the combat sports well and got ultimate fighting's "Captain America", Randy Couture, as their name value star to market the film around; his giant, Kurt Angle-ish noggin adorns the DVD artwork. I'd love a chance to ask the producers if your biggest name star is a mixed martial arts champion and you bother to work in a scene early on where he’s shown using moves like a guillotine choke and a cross armbreaker while training, why on earth when it comes time for the only real one-on-one battle with the warrior hero do you decide to sideline the legitimate shoot fighting champion by having him transform into a giant invisible scorpion? Yes; an invisible giant scorpion! I realize fight scenes take time to choreograph and CGI is expensive but geez... AN INVISIBLE SCORPION?

As far as Randy Couture's acting abilities go, if I were him I really wouldn't have quit my day job. There's clearly some sort of cosmic irony going on when the sequel to a movie that starred a pro wrestler now stars an ultimate fighter and every line of dialogue out of his mouth is delivered laughably like a generic musclehead wrestler from the 1980's cutting a really bad promo on an opponent. Only thing missing was having the perpetually shirtless Couture start flexing his swollen muscles after delivering threats of violence.

We start off with Mathayus as a young boy attending Akkadian warrior camp where Randy Couture's Sargon (the phrase “evil ancient gym teacher” kept coming to mind) discovers that one of the children is secretly a girl named Layla, and boots her out for being the wrong sex. Mathayus tries to defend his life-long friend. Sargon would have killed him for his insolence had he not been stopped by Mathayus' dad, himself a warrior of legendary status - no matter where Mathayus goes for the remainder of the film someone inevitably has heard of his father. Sargon really hates it when someone shows him up before he can axe-murder a child, so mad in fact that later that evening he uses his dark powers to transform into the smoke monster from "Lost" and showers Mathayus' dad with deadly scorpions.

Young Mathayus vows to become the greatest warrior of all time and avenge his father. He'll spend the next few years (or at least the next few seconds of montage) far away training to become a member of an elite fighting force called The Black Scorpions. Insert Ric Flair/Ole Anderson joke here.

Now a young man looking ready to co-star in HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 4: SPRING BREAK HAWAII, Mathayus returns as the top warrior of his class. Though if you ask me the only thing Copon seems to have mastered is the art of glaring angrily. He plans to kill Sargon but hasn't bothered to actually formulate a plan to go about this. Sargon, now the new king after having killed King Hammurabi (Take that, history!), will soon add killing Mathayus' brother with a magical homing arrow to the list of the future Scorpion King's grievances against him.

Someone as a joke should have that life-size statue of Randy Couture posing like Superman to Dana White.

With jacked-up warrior-sorceror Sargon watching via closed-circuit cauldron (even this probably drew a better buyrate than the Yamma Pit Fighting pay-per-view), Mathayus and Layla who is now all grown up and teen model hot set off in search of an enchanted sword with the ability to cut through anything - even the overtly stiff acting of a UFC champion.

Layla talks of wanting to live a life of adventure. If that's the case then she really picked the wrong the movie given how extremely formulaic and devoid of any adventurous spark the journey she's about to embark on is. Even their romance is so assured the screenwriter didn't even bother to develop any sort of relationship between the two.

Their two-person quest quickly turns into a three-person quest when they're joined by a flamboyant young Greek scholar, a character almost like the kid from Last Action Hero except instead of action movie clichés he's there to explain all the ancient myths and legends the screenwriter wants us to know about. He's the lone brightspot of the movie if only because he's the only character with anything resembling a real personality.

Then their ranks will further swell after Mathayus saves some men from the world's wimpiest Minotaur in a fight that lasts all of about 20-seconds. Too many extraneous characters when the focus should be on the one the film is named after and none of them are the least bit interesting, least of all the one the film is named after.

Where as the original SCORPION KING could never decide whether it wanted to be a campy fantasy flick or a straightforward fantasy film with lighthearted moments, SCORPION KING 2: RISE OF A WARRIOR settles on the latter with its lighthearted moments stemming primarily from terrible writing. For starters, the two young leads sound more like characters from "Saved by the Bell" transplanted to ancient times and given swords. The dialogue sounds far too modern even when compared to the previous film and most of it is just so bad you can't even laugh at it. For example, Layla says to Mathayus after a sassy exchange, "I see your Black Scorpion training also contained lessons in becoming an arrogant jerk. Congratulations, you passed with flying colors." Or when their Greek comrade exclaims, "I'm a poet, jackass!" Even “Hercules, The Legendary Journeys” had more clever, not to mention more dignified dialogue than this.

The script by the co-writer of the notoriously bad SPEED 2 even goes so far as to flagrantly borrow the whole "leap of faith" concept from INDIANA JONES & THE LAST CRUSADE and an encounter with an evil witch of the underworld turns a tad perplexing because the actress playing the role is quite young and attractive yet to listen to some of the dialogue spoken about her you'd think she looked like Estelle Getty's corpse. Suffice to say this is not a well written movie.

Then again, neither was the first one. But at least the first film had some liveliness to it and the characters had some personality. Even director Russell Mulcahey (HIGHLANDER, HIGHLANDER 2: THE QUICKENING, THE SHADOW, RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION) seemed bored with the stodgy material he had to work with and phoned it in. The production clearly had a decent budget for a direct-to-DVD affair yet nobody bothered to make any use of it other than to build some sets slightly fancier than that seen in your average "Stargate SG-1" episode. Brief spurts of bloodless, garden-variety swordplay break out about every 5-10 minutes and the occassional scantily clad female shows up yet that still did nothing to keep me from growing increasingly disinterested the long this went on; and I assure you it goes on way longer - a full 20-minutes longer than the 90-minute original.

I’m reminded of what happened with the lousy DUNGEONS & DRAGONS movies. The first D&D movie was an astoundingly bad fantasy flick overloaded with stupid characters, dumb dialogue, and insipid situations. Then they made a more serious-minded DVD sequel but also made it longer in length, slower in pace, and even more lacking in the imagination department. Instead of being an improvement it just ended up being a failure even on the level of guilty pleasure escapist fantasy.

I also remain a tad perplexed by how many people of Asian and Polynesian persuasion there seemed to be roaming around in ancient Mesopotamia. It’s like the producers said, “Let’s add a Chinese guy to do some kung fu during the finale” and then couldn’t be bothered to give him anyone worth fighting during that finale.

Audiences everywhere decided to fight the future by not going to see the new X-FILES movie

I used to be a huge fan of the X-Files, probably my favorite show on television for awhile there. For me the show's "jump the shark/nuke the fridge" moment was that insulting season-ending cliffhanger where they expected us to believe Mulder had committed suicide after supposedly being learning there were no aliens or UFOs, all of it was just misinformation on the part of the government, and his life's work was a joke. Forgetting all the obvious paranormal encounters he'd already had over the past few seasons we were still supposed to believe he would kill himself over this. This was when the show fell off a cliff and subsequent episodes made it clear the people making the show didn't even have any sort of handle over their own mythology. It began to lose me rapidly after that and I was already long gone by the time the T-1000 and the chick who wasn't Julia Roberts in MYSTIC PIZZA became the new Mulder & Scully. I only even bothered to tune into the last ten minutes of the last episode just to see how they’d end it - a clip show it appeared.

I was hoping X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE would make me a believer again and remind me of what I loved about the show in the first place. Instead what I saw was easily one of the worst, most boring, movies of the year. This movie was supposed to breath new life into the X-FILES brand name but only succeeds in putting a pillow over the franchise's face and waits for the legs to stop kicking. By the end, I was wishing that I'd been watching a big screen version of PSI FACTOR instead; a feature film based on that episode about the big, flesh-eating fleas with the glowing red eyes hiding in the bushes would have made for more stimulating entertainment than this.

First of all, the X-File at the heart of the story was barely an X-File. No aliens, no UFOs, no monsters, no supernatural madmen... Just a psychic pedophile ex-priest experiencing visions he believes to be from God pertaining to the case of a missing FBI agent and some evil Russians conducting lame experiments that fall somewhere between FRANKENSTEIN and the THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE.

Some reviews have compared this new movie to a mediocre X-Files episode. I say this was more like X-Files creator Chris Carter had a leftover plot idea for a particularly uninteresting episode of his other show MILLENNIUM and plugged Mulder & Scully into it to concoct a movie that would only appeal to the sort of hardcore X-File fans that still write fanfics about Mulder slipping Scully the old “flukeman” if you catch my drift.

Scully, who somehow went from being a forensic pathologist for the FBI to treating juvenile cancer patients at a Catholic hospital where she spends considerable time arguing with others over the proper treating of a young boy who has absolutely nothing to do with anything, is approached by FBI agents seeking Mulder played by Amanda Peet and Xzibit, another rapper turned actor who thinks growling his lines qualifies as acting.

Now a full-time recluse, Mulder, last seen on the run after being tried for treason in front a military kangaroo court, is now offered fully immunity if he agrees to help them because only someone with his X-File experience can do what they need done - try and confirm that the psychic ex-priest is a real psychic. Mulder accepts the deal and accomplishes what they wanted him to do by merely letting the ex-priest follow-up on his visions that keep proving to be accurate.

There's no way any same human being could believe this weak case really required the government to seek out and offer immunity to Mulder, much of the film felt like pointless filler, a good deal of the dialogue was downright repetitive (Can Scully tell us how she can't do this again one more time? How about yet another speech about not giving up?), and the whole faith/wanting to believe/not giving up speechifying was so heavy handed it made THE HAPPENING seem subtle by comparison.

Speaking of which, anyone familiar with the show knows that Mulder was always skeptical when it came to religious phenomenon and Scully was a believer. The roles have been reversed here with no mention that this is the polar opposite of X-Files canon.

It all builds to a finale that has Mulder barely conscious, Scully smacking a guy in the face with a board, and Skinner showing up just in the nick of time to pull a gun on some bad guys and use his body to keep Mulder warm in the snow. So much excitement I can't figure out why they didn't film it for IMAX screens where it belongs.

And that final show during the closing credits, why not just have Chris Carter appear on the screen giving the finger to the camera instead?

David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson both slip right back into their roles with relative ease and there were very brief flashes of what once was, but mostly X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE was just a very boring, nothing happening movie that only serves to remind everyone why the X-FILES fizzled out in the first place rather than going out with style. Then again, I don't think audiences needed that reminder since so few even bothered to see it.

Worst of all, instead of admitting they blew it, you got Frank Spotnitz, the co-writer of the film and also the guy who botched the revamping of KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER a few years ago to a monumental degree, playing the blame game in a most desperate fashion. In an online interview with iFMagazine he blames the box office failure on studio's marketing, not the film’s quality or the lack of interest in the X-FILES franchise. Get this million dollar quote:

"I always felt that 20th Century Fox had a bit of a problem because they not only have the X-Men franchise, but also the X-Files franchise and in both cases, they used the big “X” to promote them both. That said, I’m almost wondering if using the “X” so prominent on posters, might have confused audiences."

So his excuse is that people didn't know it was an X-FILES movie and might have thought it was X-MEN instead? If that's the case then wouldn't the movie have opened considerably bigger since I'm fairly certain there are more people out there who'd pay to see a new X-MEN movie than a new X-FILES flick? That's pretty skewered even by Hollywood blame game logic.

Here's the sad reality. People still care about SEX & THE CITY and that's why that movie was a big hit at the box office. The X-FILES has simply become irrelevant. Those final seasons of the TV series nailed the coffin, there's nothing left to believe in, and no matter how much the movie begs us all not to give up, me, I give up. Given how close I repeatedly came to getting up and walking out on this stinker they should have called this movie X-FILES: I WANT TO LEAVE.

Anyone still wanting more X-FILES need just wait 15-20 years when the show gets revived with new actors with Duchovny and Anderson appearing as their elder selves. Maybe they can even change their minds about the fate of baby William - a throwaway line in this film - by having him all grown up looking to continue the family legacy of proving alien life but with alien-like powers, sort of like Mulder combined with the half-alien girl from the show OUT OF THIS WORLD. That sounds about right for the natural progression of the show.

Speaking of reviving cult TV programs...

Now 95% Hasselhoff-free!

Finally, a review I’ve been sitting on for about six months, the strange case of a recent TV movie pilot that succeeded in getting the show picked-up for series yet the guy who was then hired to oversee that new weekly series went on the record calling the pilot utter crap and letting it be known he plans to do everything he can to distance the new series from pilot's atrociousness. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the February 2008 movie pilot for NBC's updated KNIGHT RIDER.

We're first introduced to the new Michael Knight - actually its Michael Traceur this time, an ex-Army Ranger turned professional pretty boy slacker, as he's awoken in bed with the two gorgeous young women he had a threesome with the night before. We're then introduced to a beautiful young female FBI agent at her beachfront home taking a sexy shower before going inside to say goodbye to her own one night stand bedmate - a beautiful young blonde woman. So the new Michael Knight is a lothario into ménage a trois and another character that will play an integral part in the story is a lipstick lesbian?

Congratulations are in order to the idiots behind the new KNIGHT RIDER who in their moronic pursuit to make this 21st century KNIGHT RIDER hipper and edgier managed to do two things in the opening ten minutes that probably led to many more prudent parents around the country changing the channel rather than letting their children watch any further. Did these people forget that the original KNIGHT RIDER was considered family friendly viewing and that kids composed a large portion of its audience? Did they forget they used to be those children 20 some odd years ago? Did they forget that a lot of those kids grew up to have their own kids and those grown kids might not be too keen on a sexually provocative KNIGHT RIDER? And here's the kicker - the sexual proclivities of those two characters never factor into the rest of the two-hour movie which is otherwise fairly mild entertainment. So what was the point opening the movie that way? Idiots.

While I fully realize the original David Hasselhoff and his talking super car fighting crime TV show was hardly great television to begin with, it was not without its entertainment value at the time. Hey, I was a little kid. Nowadays, KNIGHT RIDER is something I think back on and laugh about. It's not a TV show I find any repeat value in my adulthood. I can still dig on the theme music but that's about it; attempts to watch a few episodes rerunning on cable a few years back led to me changing the channel within 10-15 minutes.

I still decided to give NBC's much hyped revamping of KNIGHT RIDER a shot in the hopes they might just recapture a little bit of the magic I experienced as a youth. They did not. Oh, did they ever not. The two-hours of the 2008 KNIGHT RIDER managed to give the word "vacuous" a bad name. How ironic that this pitiful attempt to resurrect something best remembered today for its retro kitsch value in the form of a sleeker, cooler package would come along during the same television season that the same network already saw their darker, sexier BIONIC WOMAN remake crash and burn in epic fashion.

Now would be a good time to mention that the writer of this two-hour movie designed to potentially relaunch KNIGHT RIDER as a weekly television series once again - a writer whose only other writing credit is a single episode of another short lived show I don't even remember called RAINES - wrote the damn thing in all of 12 days. To watch this pilot and know it was only written in 12 days begged one serious question on my part: what did he do for the other 11?

Gone is the Trans Am of the original in favor of a Ford Shelby GT 500 KR Mustang. Why? Because the whole movie seemed to be less a pilot for a new KNIGHT RIDER series and more like one great big Ford commercial disguised as a KNIGHT RIDER movie pilot. I know that KNIGHT RIDER has always been about the car but the sheer number of shots of this car (and its varying parts) shot from a variety of different close-ups and angles as it drove around while popular music played - not so coincidentally like a car commercial - became tantamount to Pamela Anderson running up and down on the beach in slow motion on Baywatch. Wrong Hasselhoffian show you're mimicking the style of there, NBC.

All through the commercial breaks viewers were inundated with Ford ads hyping a contest in which viewers could win a variety of Ford models used in the program including one identical to the new K.I.T.T. Starting about an hour in we were even treated to a series of really lame commercials with the actor playing Michael driving around in a different Ford car while a jealous K.I.T.T. followed and repeatedly called Michael asking what makes that car so special. Never have I so longed for a Hyundai commercial. Whatever because of that Joe Isuzu guy anyway?

MUST BUY FORD! MUST BUY FORD! MUST BUY FORD!

The original K.I.T.T. voice actor William Daniels had to be replaced at the last minute when it turned out his voice was already being used in voiceovers for a rival car company and this being one great big Ford circle jerk and all...

Stepping in as the new voice of Knight Industries Two Thousand is (Wait for it! Wait for it!) Academy Award nominated actor Val Kilmer. I'm almost surprised we didn't hear Kilmer counting his money in the background between line readings. Then again, Kilmer's career of late hasn't exactly been anything to write home about. He seems to be trying to give Steven Seagal, Jean Claude Van Damme, and Wesley Snipes a run for their money in the DTV action-thriller starring a former big screen superstar department.

To me Kilmer's K.I.T.T. sounded like HAL 9000 having seriously mellowed out after smoking a fatty. It's like Kilmer believed he need to make his voice sound robotic to begin with thus making his delivery almost completely lifeless to begin with, lacking even the most basic enthusiasm Daniels' K.I.T.T. voice expressed. I eventually found myself thinking maybe they should have just hired Gilbert Gottfried or Chris Tucker to voice K.I.T.T. and played this whole thing off as one big joke ala the recent big screen DUKES OF HAZZARD and STARSKY & HUTCH revivals.

Worse yet, the new Ford Mustang K.I.T.T. is a total bore as a automobile, so much so they should have just eliminated the talking car aspect all-together and billed this as a remake of NBC's short-lived 1994 KNIGHT RIDER retread VIPER instead. This K.I.T.T. can still talk and drive itself and has all manner of computer and communication abilities, but gone is the signature turbo boost. You read that correctly; never at any point does this new K.I.T.T. jump over anything. Unforgivable! This would be like bringing back THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN and never having him run while we hear that "da-na-na-na-na-na-na" sound effect.

What can the new K.I.T.T. do? It can slightly morph itself into a sportier version with a spoiler and it can change both its color and its license plate. Big whoop! It's also got a special shield that makes it bulletproof, so never let it be said that the new K.I.T.T. wasn't built "Ford Tough".

The movie opens with the brilliant scientist that created K.I.T.T. and keeps the new model in his garage being murdered by generic bad guys seeking some super state-of-the-art artificial intelligence system called Prometheus that's been developed for the Pentagon. The new and improved K.I.T.T. springs to life and makes a speedy getaway as the new (and most definitely not improved) alternative metal techno remix of the classic KNIGHT RIDER theme begins to play. The opening few chords of the KNIGHT RIDER theme are recognizable but the rest is just noise. This wasn't nearly as bad as a similar fine tuning the William Tell Overture was given by the WB Network when they tried bringing back THE LONE RANGER for a younger 21st century audience but not for lack of trying.

K.I.T.T. has been preprogrammed in the event of that scientist's death to seek out a pretty young college professor named Sarah for reasons that really aren't worth getting into. Besides, after arriving just in the nick of time to save Sarah and outrun bad guy's in vehicular pursuit, K.I.T.T.'s programming now sends them both off to find Michael Traceur, who as we'll come to learn later on is the son of David Hasselhoff's Michael Knight. And wouldn't you know it, Sarah and Michael Traceur used to be sweethearts until they split up because he she felt he was too immature. More immature than he is now? Michael Traceur struck me as being better suited for the role of a scheming frat boy on a CW Network teen drama. Cue bickering exes’ romantic subplot in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

More like "Gripe Rider"

The two of them have no on-screen chemistry and, worse, the new Michael and the new voice of K.I.T.T. are severly lacking in the chemistry department as well. Hard as it to even write this with a straight face, Michael Knight and the car had chemistry - they were a tag team and sounded like best friends when talking to one another. Michael Traceur and the things Val Kilmer will do for money recite banal dialogue most banally without a hint of genuine friendship. "Val K.I.T.T.mer" already sounded bored to begin with and, shocked as I am to say this, the actor playing the new Michael made me long for some good old fashioned Hasselhoffian dramatics.

The Hoff himself will make a cameo towards the end in a scene that ultimately amounts to nothing other than giving us all a chance to gawk at how incredibly old Hasselhoff now looks. If this was meant to be a sort of passing of the torch then it failed due to lack of any flame to pass on. Besides, didn't Hasselhoff try passing the torch to that blonde chick in KNIGHT RIDER 2000? Whatever happened to her? Hanging out with the Joe Isuzu guy I bet.

It also didn't take long before this new KNIGHT RIDER reminded of the main thing I never liked about the original KNIGHT RIDER series, a problem that plagued many other similar shows of the era - the villains were never as fantastical as the good guys. By that I mean the hero may be drive an artificially intelligent car capable of a variety of vehicular superpowers but the villains remained run of the mill crooks, criminals, commandos, and various other generic TV cop show nogoodnicks. The most memorable episodes of KNIGHT RIDER to me were the ones that involved C.A.R.R., an evil version of K.I.T.T., and even an evil goateed Hasselhoff doppelganger.

The villains of this new KNIGHT RIDER are members of a corrupt private security firm called Blackriver. Hmmm... You don't suppose they based Blackriver on Blackwater, the controversial unregulated private security firm that came under much scrutiny not too long ago for some shooting deaths in Iraq? This an attempt to be topical or just more lazy screenwriting? It makes no difference because the bad guys of this pilot are just uber generic gun-toting villains dressed in black. Zzzzzzzzz.........

How can there be any time to adequately develop the villains as anything other than stock henchmen when the movie is trying to work in so many characters in such a short amount of time? This should have been all about Michael and K.I.T.T. Instead it's Michael, K.I.T.T., Sarah, the lesbian FBI agent, Michael's car geek friend, Sarah's rich scientist daddy who eventually decides to relaunch the Knight Rider clandestine crimefighter program with Michael behind the wheel, some goons Michael owes money too, Michael's mom and long lost dad, and then somewhere in between all that they had to squeeze in the bad guys and their nefarious scheme. That's a whole lot of people to not give a damn about.

A two-hour movie written as poorly as it was hastily and lacking even a trace of the fun of the original series - that is unless you count an awful lot of pointless driving around and the occasional car chase that really pales in our post-FAST & THE FURIOUS world as fun; what a dud. The plot amounts to little more than meeting someone, then driving to the location of the next person they need to meet up with, and then heading to the next location to meet up with the next someone or someone's, all the while occasionally getting chased and shot at by bad guys. 12 days, huh?

I won't bother asking how the hell one screws up a concept as simple as KNIGHT RIDER because I remember watching KNIGHT RIDER 2000, KNIGHT RIDER 2010, and even an episode or two of the abysmal short-lived TEAM KNIGHT RIDER syndicated series. Historically speaking, it's easier to screw up KNIGHT RIDER than it is to get it right. That rich tradition of crappy retreads lives on.

But the hype worked, the ratings were stellar, and despite poor word of mouth the new and most definitely not improved KNIGHT RIDER will be getting a second chance at life next month as part of NBC's fall schedule. Frankly, I don't see this lasting 12 episodes unless the guy in charge - who claims his version will be like THE FAST & THE FURIOUS meets LAS VEGAS - makes some major improvements. I still give it 12 episodes.

Now if only someone at NBC would get it in their head to bring back MISFITS OF SCIENCE or MANIMAL. I think the world today is more than ready for a MANIMAL revival. Preferably starring Casper Van Dien!

Or even better: CRYPTO-MAN! It's just like MANIMAL except instead of ordinary animals he turns into creatures of cryptozoology. He can do so thanks to a magical Himalayan medallion given to him by famed millionaire crypto-hunter Tom Slick. Each week our hero uses his ability to tranform into Bigfoot, the chupacabra, the Loch Ness Monster, the Mongolian Deathworm, and so on to thwart criminal enterprises and other assorted villainy. I do believe I may have a hit on my hands. Somebody get me a meeting with Jeff Zucker. And Casper Van Dien's phone number!

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE BLACK MASK