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Reviews
The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Spring Break Adventure (1999)
Disastrous
As the first of the Flanery-led Young Indy telefilms -- inadvisably patched together from two episodes of the early 90s series -- this feature is just mind-numbing in its choppiness.
A bit of history is in order: the second half of this telefilm, taking place in Mexico, originally aired as the second half of Young Indy's two-hour premiere, featuring Corey Carrier in the first half and using an Egyptian artifact as a loose central piece to tie the episode together. Confused? You should be. In the late 90s George Lucas decided to take the one-hour, standalone episodes of the original series and edit them into a series of 2-hour films, creating new footage in the meantime to bridge the gaps between episodes that clearly didn't belong together. This volume is the ultimate example of this.
While the second half deals with Indy joining up with revolutionaries in Mexico, the first half finds him thwarting spies in Indy's hometown of Princeton, New Jersey with assistance from -- wait for it, wait for it... -- Nancy Stratemeyer, the inspiration of Nancy Drew. Intriguing as it is to see Teen Indy's life before World War I, the entire Princeton episode is mostly dreadful, forcing awful cameos by historic figures into Indy's life in ways that just don't work. While the cameos in the series overall could be described as misguided at best, at least later volumes integrated them in a way that it didn't feel so, well, awkward.
Still, the lowest point of this compilation video by far is the additional footage of Flanery that was filmed years later to bridge the gap between the two episodes. Flanery magically ages nearly a decade in this footage and just looks old, tired, and uncomfortable in a scene in which the then-34-year-old actor is supposed to be playing a 16-year-old schoolboy. It's simply embarrassing.
Lucas' reimagining aside, the second half is by far the superior one, if for no other reason than it introduces Ronny Coutteure as Remy, Indy's Belgian friend who appears in a good portion of the series, and sets Indy on a course for enlisting in World War I, which is arguably the backdrop for the best of the Young Indy episodes. It's actually a very decent introduction to Indy's World War I adventures and is easy to see why Lucas & Company envisioned it as such in the first place, rather than the tedious Princeton affair that now precedes it.
Comanche Moon (2008)
Solid cast, but ultimately flawed by weak source material
"Comanche Moon" had everything going for it. For starters, Simon Wincer's back, a man who's name is synonymous with high-quality TV westerns. Unfortunately, the problems with "Moon" are something even the most talented director couldn't solve: A poor script based on a lackluster novel.
Forget historical accuracies -- as any reader of the novels can tell you, the biggest travesty in "Moon" is that it's not even consistent with information from the original "Lonesome Dove" masterpiece. So many wonderful, rich moments in the miniseries and, to an even greater degree, the book, are completely missing in "Moon." Considering the fact that most viewers of "Moon" are probably coming with at least some sort of "Dove" background, the lack of character-driven and emotional backstory is downright painful.
That said, "Moon" is one instance where the adapted version could and should have been altered to make it more suitable for the screen. For example, the novel "Moon" focuses largely on the Comanches themselves. To its credit, the miniseries tries to service the Comanches, but in the end it gives them just enough that the viewer just gets a sense they're missing out on some important part of the story. Similarly, Val Kilmer's Scull loses out here too -- the role should have either been expanded so Kilmer (and Rachel Griffiths, for that matter) actually had something to do, or the roles should have just been reduced to smaller, supporting parts. Instead, Kilmer gets top billing for a character that just leaves you scratching your head after his appearance in the completely bizarre final act.
There's strange moments throughout the film that just make no sense to those who haven't read the book (a killer parrot? what?) -- further, there isn't a single scene that shows us that Call and McCrae are anything near the amazing Texas rangers they claim to be. Not a single one of their expeditions in Moon (or "Dead Man's Walk," for that matter) ends successfully, and Call and McCrae just seem to blunder their way through one pointless mission after another.
Frankly, Larry McMurtry should never have been given the job of writing the script, and only did so because of the praise surrounding that other cowboy movie, Brokeback Mountain. McMurtry can write good novels (although there's some dissension over the consistency of that statement), but he's never exactly established himself as a scriptwriter. This production would have benefited from not only bringing back director Wincer, but original screenwriter Bill Wittcliff to adapt the novel to screen. Witcliff doesn't exactly have a mountainload of material to his screen writing credit, but no one can deny he did a fantastic job at whittling down the original "Lonesome Dove." With all this said, "Comanche Moon" is almost a brilliant production, aided by a terrific cast that unfortunately just aren't given enough to do. Steve Zahn's portrayal of Gus McCrae -- or rather, his portrayal of Robert Duvall as Gus McCrae -- is dead-on. And while some have criticized Karl Urban as Woodrow Call, saying his performance doesn't imitate the quiet, stoic Woodrow of the original movie, all I can say is: blame McMurtry, because McMurtry is the one who -- both in the "Moon" novel and now the miniseries -- turned Woodrow from socially inept, awkward, but natural leader, into some emotionless character whose lines are just dull and whose character motivations are only clear if you've seen them portrayed far more adequately in the "sequel".
Still, it's the cast that sparkles in "Moon," to the degree that I left the miniseries with that same feeling of melancholy I felt watching the original "Lonesome Dove" -- this time because I realized it's probably the last time we'll see these characters appear on screen for a long, long time to come -- and quite honestly, this cast could have done so well in a well-nurtured, full-blown network TV series.
All in all, aside from wasted opportunities with the cast, the biggest travesty is that the original Lonesome Dove novel contained so much rich backstory for the characters that would have been fascinating, utterly fascinating, to see translated on screen. Unfortunately, all that has been tossed aside in favor of McMurtry's tedious, inconsistent and ultimately irrelevant, prequel.