Drifting Into Deep Water: A Team: B Movie

Like most of you, I grew up lovin' The A Team. Like a few of you, I grew up w/ certain episodes memorized. I watched it every week, & then when I was in high school it was on in syndication so I got to watch it again. I always enjoyed the episodes in exotic locations the most. In one, they help rangers in an Elephant reserve in Africa (BA bangs the ranger). In another episode, they fight Nazis on the Amazon (Face probably bangs someone, but I don't remember). In another episode, they end up in Eastern Europe to play a football game against the Russians (an obvious Victory rip-off). Why they thought ripping off Victory was a good idea was never explained unless it was solely as an excuse to get Joe Namath to guest star... in which case, I can think of a handful of better plots in which he could have featured. The pilot (which aired immediately after Super Bowl XVII... the Redskins beat Miami 27-17) takes place in Mexico & sees the team fighting a drug cartel. (You may remember that this episode lent its name to one of our favorite inventions, The Mexican Slayride: a glass of Negra Modelo w/ a couple shots of Captain Morgan's. Like the unexplained problems in the football episode, we encounter a rather odd one in the pilot too: Why it's spelled "slay" instead of "sleigh".

With this in mind, I took it upon myself to sit through the new A Team film the other night. It was better than I expected, but it was still a piece of shit. The problems weren't what I'd heard though. People have complained about the acting and the plot, but the cast is good & the plot almost works. I don't mind that it was updated to do away w/ the Viet Nam back story. Placing the team in Iraq makes sense. The real problems lie in the directing & editing. A more unified vision would have made it a good film, but the long, sweeping, beautiful landscape shots are cut short to get the action, but then the action is disjointed. It's disjointed because they don't take the time that was required to build up the story. Maybe I'm asking too much from an '80's TV reboot, but when it comes to The A Team, I can be pretty demanding. It seems like another case of the old "too many cooks" situation.

What I really liked about the film:
1) The explanation of BA's fear of flying. It works, & it's funny.
2) the destruction of the van. It happens early, & it's also kind of funny.
3) The bad guys. They're more complex than 1 would expect.
4) The way they updated it while keeping the camp factor the same.