What happens when Hollywood steals from the smaller screen?
Watching the trailer for Dax Shepard’s big screen take on the 1970s television series “CHIPs” — which hits theaters this weekend — was difficult enough. I believe I’ll avoid putting myself through more than the couple minutes I already endured and skip the movie.
Hollywood has all but committed serious crimes in its attempts to convert television shows into successful films — “The A-Team,” “Dragnet,” and “Miami Vice” come to mind.
One of my biggest film disappointments in recent years was Ben Stiller assaulting my childhood memories with “Starsky and Hutch.” After all, Starsky wasn’t supposed to be anal retentive — he was the cool one. Taking names from beloved shows and ripping apart the characters that made people care about them — as “CHIPs” seems to be doing — is usually a shaky con-
cept, at best.
Still, in a few unlikely cases, the TV/movie remake has worked better than expected. For example: Firefly”/”Serenity”: Joss Whedon’sspace-Western, set 500 years in the future, chronicled the adventures of the crew of a space freighter trying to survive the aftermath of civil war. After debuting on Fox in 2002, bad ratings couldn’t save it from only airing 11 episodes. But a loyal fan base prompted the cast to return in the 2005 movie “Serenity,” which was wellreceived. “The Untouchables:” It’s not that it was an unlikely hit — not with this cast, writing and directing. It’s that it was so good, so long after the original television series. Which could also be said for “The Fugitive” a few years later. Both took solid material and made movies much better than the original shows. “Police Squad”/
”The Naked Gun:” Another case of a show cancelled too soon. From the comedic geniuses that brought us “Airplane” (David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker) the show only lasted six episodes in 1982. Then they got half as many movies out of the concept, which reinvented Leslie Nielson’s career as the bumbling Frank Drebin in the greatest police spoof of all-time. “The Muppet
Movie”: I remember being on the cusp of my teenage years and scoffing at the idea of making a movie out of what I thought would be leftover “Sesame Street” puppets. And I probably rode my bike to see it three times. It’s still a wonderful movie, and I dare you to watch the opening scene with Kermit and if you’re not moved, at least try not to sing along. “The Twilight
Zone”: Rod Serling’s television show was bizarre and frightening. This 1983 big-screen adaptation went even farther. Directors John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante and George Miller each took on a different chapter of terror and intrigue. See it, and you’ll never be able to look out the airplane window at the wing in the same way again.