It's been years since I had seen this miniseries. I remember watching, but beyond that my memory was pretty foggy. My roommate insisted that it's pretty terrible. It is. Seeing the 3 hour run time didn't fill me with eagerness to sit down and watch this. Luckily, they were nice enough to split it into the two parts that it aired in. A few of the DVDs have just crammed it all together or divided the series in such a way that it doesn't match how it would split up on television.
OK, it's not the worst adaptation, but it's definitely down there. The acting is pretty wooden and the characters aren't really fleshed out all that much. Gardner's politics, for example, are played down a great deal. There's one mention of his dislike of nuclear power after his poetry reading, but beyond that his main trait is boozehound.
While some stuff is cut, it does follow the book's narrative pretty closely. All of the major events are there, the botched disappearing trick, the dolls, the unfaithful husband who gets his comeuppance through the television set, the telepathic typewriter (which while creepy is admittedly pretty awesome, I would love to write a novel in my sleep).
There are parts that try to be creepy, but don't really pull it off. There's a scene at the vet as Bobbi is taking her dog, Petey, into the lobby where all the other animals freak. It was actually not badly done until we cut to a close up of a cobra sliding along the floor and some kid with an alligator. I mean, really.
There were a few nods to other King works, the Micmac tribe gets mentioned, as does Derry. The latter isn't that surprising, since a few characters actually go to the small town in the book. Ruth's comparison of Petey to Cujo was also pretty amusing.
This series didn't have much of a budget and it shows. It's not low budget enough to be simplistically charming or funny, but it's enough to ruin your suspension of disbelief in a few scenes.
Even worse is the fact that it's not even so bad that it's funny to watch. Admittedly, it doesn't induce physical pain like some other bad movies, nor does it tax your sanity, but it's just there and I found myself rather bored throughout most of it.
I will give credit where credit is due and say that the closing scene with the fireworks was rather eerie and well done.
So far, this is looking like it's one series worth skipping. We're not done yet though, there's still part 2 to wade through. Will the second half salvage the series? Find out in the next article!
Part 2
OK, what's up with the default subtitle setting being French? The default should be none and you should be able to add them if needed. It's a vexing inconvenience.
Part 2 isn't much better than part 1 sadly enough. All of the romance and what not seemed phoned in and while there were scenes that tried to be creepy, they couldn't pull it off. Take, for instance, the scene where they're outside the town hall chanting. It tries to be eerie, but it did nothing for me.
It stays close to the book for the most part, but then decides to take a radical left turn. Part of it was to make it a happier, more upbeat ending, but some of it seemed random. Having the townsfolk revert to normal after the ship leaves is one thing (I love how it's a complete 180, no recovery time needed, all of the emaciation and missing teeth are just magically undone) but the nature of the Tommyknockers is radically different too.
In the book, the townspeople were being turned into the aliens while here, the effects are similar, but it's more like the Matrix. The dead aliens are trying to bring themselves back to life by sucking out the townspeople's bio-force or something. It's true, the aliens did do that to some people in the book, but the implication is that the ship is draining everyone, which, if it is the case, why bother with the contraptions?
The alteration also weakens the series further as the aliens look ridiculous. They're very clearly rubber monsters and they don't come off as scary at all. Especially notable, is the scene where Gardner throws one of the alien corpses off of the ship's piloting console. You can tell it's a prop, Smits doesn't even pretend the thing has any weight, he just tosses it aside.
I was surprised when the dolls killed Ruth that the clown dolls didn't play a bigger part. I figured they would be the ones to relish the violent kill more than the other dolls.
Even with a 3 hour run time, a lot of stuff gets glossed over. It's understandable to an extent as the book is about 800 pages long, but even taking that into account, the watered down version just isn't very good. As I mentioned before, the characters are all flat and uninteresting and all of the emotional moments don't have the desired effect. You'd be better off just passing this one by and not even bothering.
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