I watched The A-Team this weekend.

For those who missed out on the original, it was (for me at least) cool for the following reasons:

1)  No one ever died.  EVER.  There were (I kid you not) helicopter chases where the bad guys' chopper hits a mountain, explodes, falls 200 feet to the ground...and then the bad guys stumble out of it with really bad boo-boos that will take at least six hours to shake off.

2)  The A-Team helped underdogs.  Call me old fashioned, but I have always secretly wished that I could hire someone (someone who would later refuse payment) to sweep in and solve all my problems.  In the series this usually involved thugs with sawed-off shotguns.  In my case, I guess the A-Team would go after that telemarketer who keeps calling during dinner.  I pity THAT fool.

3)  The A-Team always made a cool invention to stop the bad guys, using whatever items they had at hand.  And unlike McGuyver (another 80s icon), they made no attempt whatever to create "feasible" inventions.  As often as not The A-Team could be seen cutting apart a soda machine to create a (non-deadly) soda machine GUN which it would use to knock down the bad guys with spews of Orange Fanta and Tab.

These were cool guys.

So what about the movie?

Well, as measured against the TV show, it failed on all counts.

1)  People died.  Numerous.  Several of them even specifically died in helicopter chases.

2)  The A-Team did NOT help underdogs, it mostly just helped itself (you could argue they were helping Uncle Sam, but really this was a revenge movie).

3)  The A-Team's inventions in the movie were not really so much inventions as just invenTIVE ways of whacking bad guys.

So, the movie stank, right?

Wellllll....

Look, it wasn't The A-Team.  Not really.  BUT if the movie had been called Four Guys With Lots of Testosterone who Need (and get) a Reason to Blow Stuff up Real Good, then this could probably be counted as a success.

Exhibit 1: steering a tank.  In mid-air.  By using the tank cannon to shoot shells off that send the tank (which is more or less in free-fall) zooming in the opposite way.  Said tank then lands in a river and later drives OUT of the river.  This is both cool and shows that our tax dollars are in fact being spent to make some high quality stuff.

Exhibit 2: Murdoch (the crazy one) sets fire to Face's (Bradley Cooper's) arm.  This just struck me as funny.  I don't know why.

Exhibit 3: Face is sent to a super-max prison...and within 6 months has the whole thing so wired his "cell" looks more like a suite from the Ritz.

Silly.  Dumb.  Fun.  The guys were all about lots of back-and-forth dialogue, delivered in a machine-gun rattle reminiscent of His Girl Friday (speedwise, not intelligencewise...I ain't crazy).  There were lots of cool explosions.  Bradley Cooper got some funny lines (reason for sleeping with El General's wife: "Well, she's smoking hot, plus we both really hate you, so sparks just flew.").  Rampage was a fine substitute for Mr. T.

Was this the best movie ever?  No.  Was it as cool as other recent TV-to-silver-screen-remakes?  No.  For instance, it was not as cool as the GI Joe movie.  Why?  Because there was no Snake Eyes in the A-Team, and Snake Eyes could kill the whole A-Team faster than Face could seduce a gal.  It wasn't as cool as Transformers 2.  Why?  Because there was no giant robot with visible genitalia made of wrecking balls (I'm still in awe of that one, lo these many months later).

But was it a fun movie?  Yeah.  Did the guys have fun?  Yeah.  Did stuff blow up real good?  Yeah.

Did Hannibal get to say "I love it when a plan comes together"?  Yeah.

I'm just not sure what plan he was talking about.

But that's okay.  Something blew up real good right when he said it, so I was satisfied.

 

 

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