Variety review of Deadly Maneuvers
Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 1:20 am
I posted Variety’s 1982 review of Knight Rider’s two-hour pilot.
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18112" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
A week later, they published another review of Deadly Maneuvers. The biggest complaint is that for a car show, the stunts aren’t very good. And I actually agree: Deadly Maneuvers was pretty weak in the stunt department. But here’s the strange thing - the reviewer watched Deadly Maneuvers and ONLY that episode. He never watched the pilot, and it sounds like he didn’t even realize there WAS a pilot. So the entire review becomes ridiculous.
October 8, 1982
Telefilm Review
Knight Rider
Deadly Maneuvers
It's been 16 years since the last TV series in the talking-car genre, “My Mother The Car,” left the NBC schedule. And though it’s long time for the network to dream up a second talking-car series that lives up to the genre's tradition, it's new “Knight Rider” can truly be called the “My Mother the Car” of today.
“Knight Rider” stars KITT, a babbling Ponitac that has less character than your average depressed clutch panel. KITT’s human costar, David Hasselhoff, is unable to rise above his no-dimensional role.
It's a case of a kiddie show being done on a fairly childish level. The plotting is far-fetched, the dialogue painfully predictable, the direction listless and the overall production values negligible.
All the sins would be minor, viewed from a commercial perspective, if Knight Rider did a good job of what it's designed to do - crash cars. It does not.
The only impressive stunt in the premiere episode came when KITT maneuvered through a series of planted explosives.
It says a lot about the series lack of ambition that the show’s pivotable car crash was kept off-camera and only implied through routine sound effects.
And if the stunts weren't enough to hold the viewer, surely the plot wasn't. Through a series of silly coincidences, Hasselhoff stumbles onto and unravels a rather mundane plot to paint over nuclear missiles and sell them to other countries.
An unfortunate colonel stumbles onto the plot by accidentally dunking his hand into a can of blue paint. He reacts with utter terror, gasping, “Oh no! My god, no!” - one of the most wonderfully overacted scenes of the year.
The plot proceeds with a similar overabundance of cliché and scarcity of substance. Unfortunately, just as “Knight Rider” avoided telling any particular story, it also avoided telling the audience exactly who Hasselhoff is, what he does for a living or why he has a talking car - questions that might occur to the average viewer.
For this show to have a chance the writers will have to get Hasslehodd more of a character and less of a cliché to work with.
Perhaps a larger role could be worked in for the talented Edward Mulhare, who plays Hasselhoff’s superior and is generally portrayed as being just buffoonish enough to make Hasselhoff’s character seem intelligent by comparison.
Also, the plots must center on more clearcut and plausible conflicts, and the pace of the show must pick up significantly.
Above all, if "Knight Rider” is going to be a car crash show, they better spend a little more on the stunts. Without more impressive stuntwork, NBC really is stuck with nothing more than "My Mother The Car” without a laugh track.
__________________________________
Pretty bizarre, right? The reviewer doesn't know why Michael has a talking car, and doesn't even wonder that hmmm, maybe there was a previous episode. Thirty years later, we get the last laugh.
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18112" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
A week later, they published another review of Deadly Maneuvers. The biggest complaint is that for a car show, the stunts aren’t very good. And I actually agree: Deadly Maneuvers was pretty weak in the stunt department. But here’s the strange thing - the reviewer watched Deadly Maneuvers and ONLY that episode. He never watched the pilot, and it sounds like he didn’t even realize there WAS a pilot. So the entire review becomes ridiculous.
October 8, 1982
Telefilm Review
Knight Rider
Deadly Maneuvers
It's been 16 years since the last TV series in the talking-car genre, “My Mother The Car,” left the NBC schedule. And though it’s long time for the network to dream up a second talking-car series that lives up to the genre's tradition, it's new “Knight Rider” can truly be called the “My Mother the Car” of today.
“Knight Rider” stars KITT, a babbling Ponitac that has less character than your average depressed clutch panel. KITT’s human costar, David Hasselhoff, is unable to rise above his no-dimensional role.
It's a case of a kiddie show being done on a fairly childish level. The plotting is far-fetched, the dialogue painfully predictable, the direction listless and the overall production values negligible.
All the sins would be minor, viewed from a commercial perspective, if Knight Rider did a good job of what it's designed to do - crash cars. It does not.
The only impressive stunt in the premiere episode came when KITT maneuvered through a series of planted explosives.
It says a lot about the series lack of ambition that the show’s pivotable car crash was kept off-camera and only implied through routine sound effects.
And if the stunts weren't enough to hold the viewer, surely the plot wasn't. Through a series of silly coincidences, Hasselhoff stumbles onto and unravels a rather mundane plot to paint over nuclear missiles and sell them to other countries.
An unfortunate colonel stumbles onto the plot by accidentally dunking his hand into a can of blue paint. He reacts with utter terror, gasping, “Oh no! My god, no!” - one of the most wonderfully overacted scenes of the year.
The plot proceeds with a similar overabundance of cliché and scarcity of substance. Unfortunately, just as “Knight Rider” avoided telling any particular story, it also avoided telling the audience exactly who Hasselhoff is, what he does for a living or why he has a talking car - questions that might occur to the average viewer.
For this show to have a chance the writers will have to get Hasslehodd more of a character and less of a cliché to work with.
Perhaps a larger role could be worked in for the talented Edward Mulhare, who plays Hasselhoff’s superior and is generally portrayed as being just buffoonish enough to make Hasselhoff’s character seem intelligent by comparison.
Also, the plots must center on more clearcut and plausible conflicts, and the pace of the show must pick up significantly.
Above all, if "Knight Rider” is going to be a car crash show, they better spend a little more on the stunts. Without more impressive stuntwork, NBC really is stuck with nothing more than "My Mother The Car” without a laugh track.
__________________________________
Pretty bizarre, right? The reviewer doesn't know why Michael has a talking car, and doesn't even wonder that hmmm, maybe there was a previous episode. Thirty years later, we get the last laugh.