galensaysyes

In this series one sees Degrassi in its original form: classroom videos for little kids; and this was the form and the audience it should have stuck to. The more popular follow-up show remained the same, except for ever-growing pretensions to a significance in excess of its powers, and an ever-growing tendency toward salaciousness, which culminated at last--in the one chance the show received to sit up late amongst the grown-ups--in the series' house princess (along with her opposite number, a butter-wouldn't-melt little minx) losing her cherry. And who knows but what that had been the writers' covert object all along, even as far back as Degrassi Street? I'm reminded of a comment by one of the women in John Huston's life about another, whom he had raised from a child: something about the appeal to a man of seeing a girl grow to ****able age before his eyes. Such matters aside, the Junior High/High/School's Out episodes never graduated from the Degrassi Street level: they featured the same diagrammatic plots, the same tendentious conversations, the same cardboard performances (and the same cheap-looking production). In this initial series those things were only to be expected, since after all, that's what educational TV is like. But at 18 the cast remained as blank and flat as at 8, and still inhabited the same classroom toy-town universe; as if someone had carried on the Dick and Jane readers and pinned a Big Issue to each character: Dick gets AIDS, Jane gets anorexia, Baby Sally gets pregnant--but they're no more real for it. Degrassi Street was the first expression of what Degrassi had to say, and the last honest one; in those days the enterprise still had its head about it and knew its limits. Afterwards, all was overreach.

This movie starts, reasonably enough, with introductions. It presents one and then another of the team facing some dire predicament from which he narrowly and improbably extricates himself or is extricated by the others. These situations are depicted more or less in the key of the original show, which was hyperbolic and self-kidding. So far, so good.

But no farther. From thereon out the movie devolves into a straight commando story with occasional comic asides: your typical action movie, in other words. And who wants to see a SERIOUS version of The A Team? The movie does remember to remember one of the show's catch phrases, "I love it when a plan comes together," although not when or how to use it, and disremembers the most significant one: "He's on the jazz," said of Hannibal in his manic phase. In fact, the whole team was on the jazz, most of the time, and that's what made them entertaining. They were written and played as COMIC mercenaries, behaving outrageously to outsiders and indulging in zany byplay among themselves. George Peppard's Hannibal, in his cheerfully smug obnoxiousness, could have been the model for Dr. House; he was funny, and so were his teammates.

Their movie equivalents are not. In place of Peppard the movie offers Liam Neeson, one of the dourest actors around. Bradley Cooper, taking over for Dirk Benedict, comes the closest of the bunch; he has the right brand of cockiness but is hamstrung by poor material. And in any event, what humor comes through sits uneasily with a plot hinging on official corruption and betrayal. As the movie rolls on (and on and on), it tries increasingly to elicit our concern for the heroes' plight--but who wants to CARE about The A Team? Furthermore, the movie abandons the formula of the show--The Magnificent Seven, starring the Marx Brothers--for a routine Dirty Dozen-style story which ends where the show began. And even the action scenes are so cut up that we seldom get to see anybody do anything; we're deprived even of the simple pleasure of seeing people run, climb, and fight. As if by design, the movie blocks nearly every source of enjoyment, except the most primitive cinema can provide: that of watching objects move. But for that you can look at passing traffic.