Last night, my cable box cut out before "The L Word" - why did it have to play up during a good TV show and choose to work perfectly throughout all six hours of "Revelations"? Six hours. Six of the dullest, least invigorating hours I've ever spent in front of a television screen.
Screenwriter David Seltzer went on record as not really believing in the stuff when he wrote "The Omen," but this tale of the End of Days is truly lacking in conviction from Joseph Vitarelli's clichéd choral theme onwards (whatever you might think of "The Passion of the Christ," you can't deny that Mel Gibson genuinely put his money where his mouth is); instead of being thought-provoking and chilling, the first four hours are nothing but build-up with nothing going anywhere, and when it's not teasing you it's being ridiculous (ominous supermodels dressed in black hanging around? Ooooh, scary).
The miniseries also lands us with two main characters - a relentlessly serious professor and a nun who would make Mother Teresa seem like a hedonist - who simply don't register (pity Bill Pullman, if not Natascha McElhone), leaving Michael Massee as a Satanic mass-murderer to prove that the Devil gets, if not the best tunes, at least the best lines; the dire job "Revelations" does can be summed up by a failure to care when our villain, having launched the plot by kidnapping and murdering Professor Pullman's young daughter, lures his unlikeable teenage son into his clutches (by way of a webcam fronted by a Christina Aguilera-type). And any series that casts John Rhys-Davies and fails to turn his entertaining pompousness to advantage is beyond hope; though you have to give them credit for casting Christopher Biggins as a Cardinal. (What with this and Hugh Laurie in "House, M.D.," NBC Universal wins the Most Unusual Use Of British Actors Award by a mile.)
Sadly, such little plusses are cancelled out by all the minuses - following the endless teasing, the last two hours try to crank up the action, but it's all for naught; and the abrupt, anticlimactic, cop-out of an ending just in case enough Bush voters tuned in to make an ongoing series viable will irritate the converted and atheists alike. (Fortunately, US audiences tuned out in droves from hour one onwards, meaning that the story will never be either drawn out endlessly or continued. No wonder they say "God bless America.") For a truly powerful look at the Apocalypse coming to pass today, see "The Rapture" - "Revelations" is not only not as effective as "The Omen," but it's not even "Omen IV: The Awakening." If nothing else, this does prove once and for all that when it comes to standing in for other countries, the Czech Republic is the Canada of Europe.
Father, forgive Stillking Films, Pariah and NBC Enterprises, for they know not what they do.
Screenwriter David Seltzer went on record as not really believing in the stuff when he wrote "The Omen," but this tale of the End of Days is truly lacking in conviction from Joseph Vitarelli's clichéd choral theme onwards (whatever you might think of "The Passion of the Christ," you can't deny that Mel Gibson genuinely put his money where his mouth is); instead of being thought-provoking and chilling, the first four hours are nothing but build-up with nothing going anywhere, and when it's not teasing you it's being ridiculous (ominous supermodels dressed in black hanging around? Ooooh, scary).
The miniseries also lands us with two main characters - a relentlessly serious professor and a nun who would make Mother Teresa seem like a hedonist - who simply don't register (pity Bill Pullman, if not Natascha McElhone), leaving Michael Massee as a Satanic mass-murderer to prove that the Devil gets, if not the best tunes, at least the best lines; the dire job "Revelations" does can be summed up by a failure to care when our villain, having launched the plot by kidnapping and murdering Professor Pullman's young daughter, lures his unlikeable teenage son into his clutches (by way of a webcam fronted by a Christina Aguilera-type). And any series that casts John Rhys-Davies and fails to turn his entertaining pompousness to advantage is beyond hope; though you have to give them credit for casting Christopher Biggins as a Cardinal. (What with this and Hugh Laurie in "House, M.D.," NBC Universal wins the Most Unusual Use Of British Actors Award by a mile.)
Sadly, such little plusses are cancelled out by all the minuses - following the endless teasing, the last two hours try to crank up the action, but it's all for naught; and the abrupt, anticlimactic, cop-out of an ending just in case enough Bush voters tuned in to make an ongoing series viable will irritate the converted and atheists alike. (Fortunately, US audiences tuned out in droves from hour one onwards, meaning that the story will never be either drawn out endlessly or continued. No wonder they say "God bless America.") For a truly powerful look at the Apocalypse coming to pass today, see "The Rapture" - "Revelations" is not only not as effective as "The Omen," but it's not even "Omen IV: The Awakening." If nothing else, this does prove once and for all that when it comes to standing in for other countries, the Czech Republic is the Canada of Europe.
Father, forgive Stillking Films, Pariah and NBC Enterprises, for they know not what they do.