Title: Desperation

Starring: Tom Skerritt, Ron Perlman, Steven Weber, Annabeth Gish

Director: Mick Garris

Plot: When a sheriff arrests a writer, a family, a couple, and a hitchhiker and throws them in a jail cell in the deserted town of Desperation, they must fight for their lives.

Review: Desperation is the two hundred ten minute made for TV adaptation of the Stephen King book of the same name. The short version is that, while this was interesting and had some decent acting, it just fell flat with too many flaws for me to overlook.

Just to get it out of the way, I absolutely hated the little boy; both character and actor. It was probably a combination of aspects of the performance, the fact that he was portrayed by a horrible actor is part of it, I mean it can’t be easy being a child actor among adults, but come on. The other reason that I probably didn’t like him was the annoyingly integral part of the plot that their whole salvation lay in him being told what to do by god. I’m not sure who this crappy plot device was pulled off in the book, and here it was almost redeemed by the use of the sister’s ghost. I expected this to be poor, but it was actually pretty good, however the “flashback” of the movie about what happened was unacceptable; I don’t know how to describe it, besides just being plain crappy. I also don’t know why, but it was easier for me to accept that some ancient being was taking control of people than it was to accept that god had some vested interest in telling this boy to make all these people blow up Tak. Not to beat a dead horse, but even just God’s guidance would have been ok, but the arrogance and certainty with which this boy decided he was being told by god.

I know that I stressed that point, but it was probably the most annoying and unenjoyable parts of the movie, and probably was the downfall of the movie for me. Other things that I did not like were the poor acting aside from a few. Ron Perlman did a good job as the sheriff but we saw so little of him. Other good performance were on the part of Tom Skerritt and Steven Weber among a few others, the rest were either weak performance or they suffered too much from what they all did, with so many characters a few would be understandably underdeveloped, however they all seemed to be lacking even though this was much longer than a normal movie.

I wouldn’t recommend this because, while there were some standouts, the rest seemed unimagined and unmemorable.

* * * * _ _ _ _ _ _ (4 out of ten)

Popularity: 24% [?]