[urgeok]

well i just finished Robin Cooks' Invasion last night.

another DVD that was origionally aTV miniseries - but didnt effing say so on the box - as usual.

i havent been burned by that in a long time. There was a scourge of it when video started - distributers hot for cheap but marketable product constantly tried to pass off TV movies as the real thing.

you'd first notice the oversized letters in the opening titles, then the inevitable 'guest star' or 'special guest' appearances.

meaning - no nudity, no swearing, no violence, no grit - and usually - sub par acting.

The other 2 constants are the planned commercial break timeouts and the huge gaps in time and reason.

the latter problem is a very identifiable phenomenon you get with made for TV movies - especially miniseries.

when one episode ends, the next one (origionally next week) begins without continuity - in other words we're supposed to accept that stuff happened between the last time we saw it and the next.

in a real movie you dont get this - there is more of a flow.
you are there for the whole picture so they keep things moving -
any jumps in the story line make more sense ..

but with a TV movie we just accept that 'oh, they sure fixed a lot of problems during the week when we werent watching them'

this ends up looking really bad when its on DVD/video - because we are expecting the story to continue, not jum in these leaps and bounds.

They also have a tendancy to spend a lot of time with non consequential dialogue and skip over scenes that might actually be interesting (due to the small budgets i guess)

i never noticed it before because i havent watched one of these things in years....

anyway - yes - some have decent effects (CGI is cheap now)
and there is the odd decent actor - but for the most part these are still lame shadows compared to feature films ..

and i thing there should be a fucking warning on the box.

Caution : this was a TV movie.



(the Night Stalker and one or two other notable exceptions movies are - of course - exempt from this critique !)