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Knight Rider: Movie Pilot

By fred | February 18, 2008

Okay, I’ve now seen the movie. I didn’t expected it to be any good, in fact last night I even used Bionic Woman to give away an idea of how “good” I thought this thing might turn out to be. That said, I did not go into this wanting to hate it, I was ready & willing to be fully surprised and to actually have a great time and like that damn thing.

And now that I have seen the movie, well, how shall I put it…? I guess if you’ve seen the yourself, you know what I mean. This will not be turned into a series. Or at least, it should not be. It should not, but this is NBC so it might very well happen.

I’m not sure where to start, but I know it won’t be on the “plot” of that thing, cause there was none, or close enough. To sum it up, I’d say some bad guys show up, the new KITT then drives off and picks up a few people, then rush away. Long shots of the magnificent car and multiple logos of its vendor. Boring talk between Sarah and a somewhat pretty dull car, or Sarah and Mike, who used to be a couple yet have no chemistry whatsoever, and of course she’s still in love with him despite not having talk to the guy in years, last seen him when she was 14 (or something like that…), and currently having a boyfriend.

The noise in the back are snores, I’m sorry but I hadn’t realized the movie was on, I thought this was still the commercials. It sure looked like one long commercial, though, are you sure it wasn’t actually commercials ? Anyways…

Of course Mike had to still be that cool guy who can get any girl he wants, hence why we first see him in bed with two girls. Of course. And why did we get to see that completely useless FBI agent waking up with her own one-night-stand – who happens to be a (pretty cute) girl as well ? I guess because kids these days like to see some girl on girl action on TV. Though, of course, there was none.

We had some other completely stupid and useless stories, so much that they were dropped as soon as they were introduced pretty much : Mike had to be not only this cool guy, but also one who can drive and fight, hence the first scene with him as a car racer, and ex-military that can fight better than anyone else. The idea here was that with his buddy they owned money to some bad guy, and that friend’s life was threatened, but then later on there was one line somewhere about Sarah giving him the money, and it ended there.

We still got to see that stupid friend though, by the end with everyone on the classic truck plane, because for some unknown reason he’s part of the new team it seems. He’s completely useless, but he’s there anyway. Just like that FBI chick, or Sarah. By the way why no mention of Devon, he was the main guy running things back in the days, wasn’t he ? Since we’re on that subject, yes Hasselhoff made a little guest appearance. Meaning he stand in the corner and said his name. Applause.

Now what really mattered here was the car, and nothing but the car. I don’t like it. I said it before, and maybe it’s because I liked the old one, but it’s a fat ugly car. Yes it is. More importantly, it’s got no freaking personality or character !! I’m sure people are still pissed that Will Arnett had to drop off because of General Motors, and they’re so right !

Sure, I like Arnett, but he would have given to the car something that was completely lacking here : a personality, some character, and the ability not to take itself too seriously ! That voice was so awfully boring my God! Plus, I said it before but I don’t like that new visual thing they’re using to go along the voice, I would have liked a (newly designed) three-bars voice so much better.

Besides that, there were a couple of things I didn’t like so much about the car. One, it doesn’t have even a Turbo-Boost, it just goes fast, like that. That’s a shame. I wonder if it can “jump” or not. (Yes, at some point I expected it to fly…) Two, it runs on fuel. Not water, air, solar energy, or whatever you can find on your garbage like that De Lorean from Doc Emmet Brown (okay, it needed fuel as well, damned are all those cars highly flawed or what!? Although to be fair, Doc improved his second version, which runs on steam!). Three, that whole nanotechnology thing made for some pretty lame things : I hated the close-ups of how bullets would not “hurt” the car. The few shots on the windows were more than enough, but no they had to put those stupid close-ups, again & again.

But the worst was probably how without the computer, you just hit it and it breaks, because on its own it’s not even bulletproof, not to rockets but just regular bullets! You know the other car, the old 2000 edition, didn’t need nanobots to resists bullets. And what about that “plot” : KITT is that super highly advanced artificially intelligent computer. Yet the first guy we meet can actually hack into its system, and the stupid car isn’t even able to do some basic firewall protection and cut all communications. Not without shutting down the entire system. Really, that’s how the most advanced technology works ? Really!?

Anyways, it wasn’t good, though I’ll admit it wasn’t as bad as Bionic Woman. Not that it should be a sign of anything really. And I hope there won’t be a series out of it, because obviously the main idea here was first to sell cars, then maybe see, if possible, to make something that may resemble a TV show, movie, whatever.

Posted in Reviews
Shows: Knight Rider