This remake of Robin Cook's tale is produced by Ridley Scott and has quite a cast, including Lauren Ambrose, Steven Pasquale, Geena Davis, James Woods, Ellen Burstyn, Richard Dreyfuss, James Rebhorn, Joe Morton, Michael Weston, and Joseph Mazello. We are a long way from the 1978 movie starring Michael Douglas.
I would expect that the special effects will be somewhat better than they were more than 30 years ago (see clip below from the original movie), but will we see anything new? The San Fransisco Chronicle seems to have preferred Michael Crichton's 1978 version with its suspense and medical ethics spin, something that is missing from this new version:
Not knowing who was "good" and who was "bad" drove home to readers of the novel and viewers of Crichton's film the reality of how contemporary life and medical advances test the limits of ethical conduct. It also kept us on the edges of our seats, even if our seat was just a beach towel where we were reading Cook's novel. For the most part, the crucial element of the unknown is missing from the A&E miniseries, reducing the film to a moderately engaging whodunit with expansive credibility gaps in plot and character.
Nor did the Chronicle have many positive things to say about the special effects:
The special effects get a passing grade, but just that. Again, the suspended comatose patients in Crichton's film were shocking and creepy. In the new film, they look rather like freshly laundered shirts on a dry cleaner's conveyor belt, and that's disappointing because medical science isn't the only thing that's advanced in the past 35 years.
Oh well. What else is on TV?
Posts
