The A-Team Movie

Okay, I admit it.
This is one film I've wanted to see for awhile. The A-Team is one of those iconic 80s shows everyone makes fun of but love. We know all the jokes; impossible plans, cliché lines, an impossible amount of firepower and no one being hurt. The list goes on, the show was a slice of the 80s with all the stupid that entails.

So, when they decided to do a film we knew they were trying to cash in on the tail end of the nostalgia for the era. And you know what they did a good job. Sure as a film it was a failure, the plot was predictable, film work mediocre, editing kind of crude and the acting wasn't going to win any oscars. But that's not the point of this film. It's a love letter to the show.

There isn't a single scene that isn't loaded with in jokes and over the top silliness. It fires of almost as much as Airplane and while it might not appeal to all I guarantee there is at least one that will have you laughing. A good example is Murdock's escape; we start with a skit on the 3d movie craze were in the middle of at the moment, only this time they use the two tone glasses rather than the stereo-scopic we have now, the film uses the classic A-Team theme and two of the actors are Reginald Barclay and G.F. Starbuck. Two other roles played by the main actors. Then, as if to rub our noses in it, the escape hum-vee is driven through the wall and they race to a waiting transport.

The film just doesn't stop throwing things at you. From the impossible (and I mean impossible) helicopter chase at the beginning, past the high speed truck hijacking and through the transport being shot down and the mid-air drop of a tank in the middle of a dogfight. To the raid on a office building and, finally, the sinking of a tanker by a psycho with a rocket launcher. If ever the description of a roller coaster ride was more apt it was probably just a guy recording an actual ride!

As for the actors, Liam Neeson is a fantastic Hannibal, perfectly channeling Peppard. Bradley Cooper, on the other hand, makes the role his own. Dirk Benedict was good but I could argue Cooper does a better job, at least he does a better job with the accents he has to pull off.You can buy that he's supposed to be a master of disguise. Unfortunately the other two aren't in the same league. Quinton Jackson is an even worse actor than Mr T and never quite sells the role, it isn't even a bad impression of the character. It just falls flat. Meanwhile Sharlto Copley makes Murdock looks like an actor, pretending to be insane. Dwight Shultz was able to walk the razor edge between parody and genuinely insane with his portrail.

The villains were impossibly one dimensional, over the top, pantomime characters that were so predictable it wasn't true. Any crude attempt to engineer a twist was so predictable it was pathetic. Whatever character development they attempted, whoever it was, failed incredibly badly and just to round it off the Jessica Biel's character was so under developed I almost expected her to get shot before the end. Then again that would have shown a sign of intelligence, other than "Weee, bang! pretty fireworks!"

Still, for all it's flaws it is a fun film, and that's something to enjoy. It's not trying to make some dull moral message like Avatar or be a over drawn confusing mess like the matrix films. It doesn't even try to expand your horizons like Inception. It just tries to be a fun popcorn movie that has a laugh at everything in sight and succeeds. This is the sort of film Transformers 2 wishes it could be. Entertaining, poking fun at itself and pulling it off with style. While most summer block busters are becoming overly arty and pretentious. It leans agains the corner if the room with a half burnt cigar in its mouth and a baseball cap on at an angle.

I suggest watching it if you can, because it's bad in all the right places. Just like the show was, and that's the best tribute it could have given.