Overall Rating
  Awesome: 38.89%
Worth A Look: 21.43%
Average: 10.32%
Pretty Bad: 11.9%
Total Crap: 17.46%
4 reviews, 102 user ratings
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| Dune |
by Brian McKay
"When, Oh Lord, will they learn to leave well enough alone?"
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Nothing can fuck up a good movie like a case of re-make-itis. The only thing worse than a shitty sequel is an inferior remake, and consequently, nothing will make you appreciate the source material more. Case in point: let us contrast the Sci-Fi channel's unholy debacle with David Lynch's masterpiece.Having been a fan of the orginal Dune film for years, I was excited to see the Sci-Fi channel's take on the Frank Herbert classic. My girlfriend was also a huge fan of the film, and so we decided to go in together on purchasing the miniseries DVD. She fell asleep an hour into it, but I trudged on ahead like a good little Sardukar trooper. Now I'm wondering how much I can get for it on E-bay.
To be entirely fair, the miniseries isn't completely unwatchable. Some of the visual effects, most notably the sandworms, are an actual improvement over the original. Also, the knife-fighting scenes are dynamic and competently coreographed. But while some scenes look absolutely stunning, others suffer from a distinct lack of production values, and this kind of inconsistency plagues the entire miniseries. But the first and biggest stumbling block with it is the costumes. I have never seen such atrocious and ridiculous attire in my life, and I constantly wondered how they expected the actors to deliver the material with a straight face while wearing them, much less us to take it seriously while watching them. I felt like I was watching the deformed bastard child of an old Buck Rodgers serial and a 1940's musical. Gaudy colors and materials, topped with the most ludicrous hats and headdresses ever witnessed by man, and they kept getting worse and worse as the show went along (I hope this isn't what I have to look forward to in Moulin Rouge). And what the fuck was that Kite-thing that Feyd Rautha wore on his back through half the show? But the gem in this crown of wardrobe idiocy has to be princess Irulan's butterfly headdress. Its stupidity cannot be believed until seen. Unfortunately, all of this turns what could have been a halfway competent remake into an utterly unintentional parody. If sandworms really existed, it would be a fitting end to feed the costume designer to one.
So, the first point goes to Lynch's film, which used far more conservative and austere costumes to much better effect. From the Atreides and Imperial military uniforms, to the body-hugging and imposing Fremen stillsuits, to the shaved heads and black robes of the Bene Gesserit, the costumes in Lynch's film were not only impressive and appropriate to the epic scope of the film, but they never once elicited a chuckle, much less an "Oh Christ, you've GOT to be KIDDING."
The second stumbling block in this sprawling six-hour disaster is the aforementioned production values. It is painfully obvious that many of the desert scenes were shot on a soundstage somewhere with a painted desert-sky and sand dune background. Likewise, many of the exterior shots of the city of Arrakeen appear to be nothing more than glorified matte paintings. A strange contrast to the visuals of the sandworms or Spacing Guild Highliners, which look surprisingly cool. But it's these former moments that shatter what little disbelief wasn't already cornholed by the horrible costumes. This spotty visual quality leads me to believe that they couldn't make the entire production as ambitious as they wanted to with the budget at hand, so they played pick-and-choose, lavishing money and care on some of the more impressive scenes while merely scrimping by on the rest. Even the stunning blue eyes of the fremen are not done with any consistency. This is also plain to see in the major battle scenes which, while potentially exciting, are far too truncated to really satisfy. The saving grace in this department are the individual knife fights, especially the shield fighting, which we don't see nearly enough of.
So, if you're keeping score at home, that's 30-love for Mr. Lynch. While the 15 year old special effects in the film aren't as impressive as those used in the miniseries, they are at least consistently applied. The production values are equally consistent, and during the outdoor scenes I never once doubted that the characters were actually in the desert rather than on a soundstage (or sandstage, if you will). Likewise, Lynch lavished a bit more time and detail on the battles and beautifully managed to get the epic scope of them across to the viewer.
And now to the final hurdle of the miniseries: Story and acting. If one were going to do a re-telling of Dune, and within the luxury of a 5-hour window, you would think that one would at least try to stick to the source material. I don't mean Lynch's film, but the original novel itself. Lynch took some liberties with Herbert's story. He had to, because there was no way it could realistically be told in a 2+ hour time period otherwise. John Harrison, writer and director of the Sci-fi miniseries, has no such excuse. He does add some of the original elements of the story that Lynch either never filmed, or had to cut for length. But he tends to tack on other scenes that seem to be nothing more than filler. This miniseries could have been done more effectively within a four hour window, and trimmed some of the fat, like Irulan's seduction of Feyd Rautha, or the state dinner on Arrakis where she and her infamous buttefly costume (I will wake up in a cold sweat over that for weeks to come) make their appearance. Equally annoying is the stilted delivery of the dialogue, and the tendency the actors have to pronounce nearly every name different than they were in Lynch's film - i.e. Chani ("chaw-nee") sounds more like "Janey". This butchered pronunciation of the script is another source of frustration and unsolicited laughter. Likewise, the cast is populated by a bunch of unknown and mostly foreign actors, and the mishmash of accents quickly becomes grating.
Of course, Mr Lynch also used an international cast in his film. The major difference, however, is that these people had TALENT. The acting in the miniseries is either so wooden or over the top, especially when compared to the same lines spoken by the cast of Lynch's films, that it just feels like going through the motions and waiting for the next decent special effects segment. Alec Newman is mildly competent as Paul Atreides, but he's no Kyle MacLachlan. And while Barbora Kodetova makes for a beautiful and mesmerizingly blue-eyed Chani (especially when she peels out of her stillsuit), she does not bring the fierce demeanor or emotion to the role that Sean Young did. The rest of the miniseries cast, including an incredibly wooden William Hurt (the only person whose name appears on the front of the DVD case, by the way, which should have been my first warning), is merely there to fill the various roles, but cannot possibly fill the shoes of their predecessors. The lineup in Lynch's film was a telented international cast of respected film and theater actors. It could almost be classified as an "all-star" cast, even though some of it's members, like pre-Trek Patrick Stewart, hadn't realized their full star potential yet. Oh, and by the way, Sting's portrayal of Feyd Rautha still kicks ass. Let's see, I believe that makes the score 40-love, in favor of Mr. Lynch.Frank Herbert's novel is not the easiest medium to adapt to film. That Lynch could render a far superior telling of it with half the time and budget afforded to the miniseries is a testament to his genius. Game, set, and match, to David Lynch.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=423&reviewer=258
originally posted: 05/27/01 08:59:19
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USA
14-Dec-1984 (PG-13)
DVD: 31-Jan-2006
UK
N/A
Australia
N/A
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