Flashback Friday-60’s TV Transformed To Film-Get Smart (2008) & The Beverly Hillbillies (1993)

Nostalgia. The good old days. Times gone by.

Hollywood has been banking on this idea since it’s inception.

Audiences are used to remakes and reboots. The question is, is the remake/reboot worthy of the original product and does it give justice to the memories of the fans of the original production?

This is the question I am going to answer tonight.

The first film I am going to examine in this post is Get Smart (2008). Based on the television show that aired from 1965-1970, Maxwell Smart (Steve Carell) is a spy. While he is a genius in one area, his social skills leave something to be desired. Joining him is Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway), who may be the actual brains of the outfit. Their task, should they choose to accept it: prevent an attack from a Russian spy agency.

I wasn’t around during the show’s original run, but from what I can tell, the screen play sticks pretty close to the universe that is Get Smart. The cast was well-chosen, especially Carell and Hathaway as Maxwell and Agent 99.

The second film I will examine is The Beverly Hillbillies (1993). Originally airing from 1962-1971, the lead character is Jedd Clampett (Ernest Varney) a redneck who strikes it rich when he finds an oil patch that adds quite nicely to his bank account. Deciding to put his new-found fortune to good use, Jedd, his daughter Elly May (Erika Eleniak), his nephew Jethro Bodine (Diedrich Bader) and his mother known as Granny (Cloris Leachman) decide to pull up stakes and move to Beverly Hills.

But with their new-found fortune, Jedd and Co are swimming in a shark tank who know easy prey when they see it. Can the Clamplett clan survive California or will they return to Arkansas empty-handed?

The plus of this movie is that movie keeps the campiness and the kookiness of the original series. The minus of this movie is that it is almost too cookie cutter, as the screen play was stitched together from individual episodes.

Do I recommend them? Get Smart, yes. Beverly Hillbillies, n0.

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Flashback Friday-Clarissa (1991)

Fate is a funny thing. Fate may lead us to great financial fortune, but in the end, it does us no good.

In 1991, Samuel Richardson’s 18th century novel Clarissa was taken from the page to the television screen.

The heroine, Clarissa Harlowe (Saskia Wickham) is a young women who has just been named as her late grandfather’s heir. Her family sees Clarissa’s new fortune as their path to moving up in the world. The first man they try to convince her to marry is Robert Lovelace (Sean Bean), who will inherit an earldom one day. But when that falls through, they convince her to agree to marry Roger Solmes (Julian Firth), a man who is repulsive in every which way possible. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Clarissa runs away with Lovelace, not knowing the consequences of her actions.

Watching Clarissa’s story unfold, I am reminded to be grateful that I live in an era when marriage is not only option. While Lovelace maybe a man of his era, there have been men like before 1748 and there are men like are after 1748.  While it does show its age being nearly 25 years old, the miniseries still holds up an after several centuries, the book is still a good read.

I recommend it.