draccy

Kate Mulgrew is a fine actress. Not just for her turn in Star Trek: Voyager, and her role as Red in Orange is the New Black. I saw her on stage years ago, playing Katharine Hepburn, and she was fantastic. But sadly, Mrs. Columbo failed her as a vehicle for her acting skills.

She was badly miscast and not believable as the oft-mentioned wife of Lieutenant Columbo. That was reflected in the attempt to change things up in Season 2 by having her suddenly be a divorcee, her ex-husband being someone whose business had him constantly traveling -- clearly not our LAPL Lieutenant -- so the Columbo name was no longer in play.

Despite Mulgrew's skilled attempt to make this character work, the writing failed her time and again. Some of the mysteries were better than others, but her repeated presence at crime scenes and even car chases right alongside police detectives who welcomed her presence was hard to swallow. She was brash and assertive, yes, good things for a reporter, but due to the flawed writing, she also came across as kind of stupid, putting herself in danger when it wasn't really necessary. Her young daughter showed up now and then, but was mostly forgotten when dangerous business called her away. Just some vague mentions of neighbors and babysitters.

Her newspaper role was strange, initially having her work for a no-reputation neighborhood advertiser, where her crime reporting would have been an odd outlier -- and then shifting her (with the same editor, a character enjoyably played by Henry Jones) to a more ordinary local newspaper. The connection between her investigations into murders and what she actually reported was never clear, since she inserted herself and became involved with the suspects and others in the case.

All in all, a poor if watchable effort.

One thing I did enjoy was to see Mulgrew act alongside a couple of future Star Trek cast members, especially Andrew Robinson. He did a good job playing an astronomer who, in one scene, gazes at the stars with Mulgrew. Unintentional foreshadowing of the better roles awaiting them both.

This movie has a few good performances going for it -- and that's all it has going for it. The leads, especially Pauley Perrette, are appealing. (Although some of the bit players seem to be acting from a teleprompter.) The material -- that is the problem. I feel as though the screenwriter/director watched the entire run of Felicity in one sitting, then sat down to write a script without catching any sleep. It really did remind me of Felicity -- a thoughtful young woman finding herself, finding love, with a shake-them-up-and- see-what-happens approach to the characters and their relationships. Except that while I usually enjoyed watching Felicity, this movie left me cold. The writing is just awful. It's amazing that the cast could come off as well as they did, as the dialogue is dull at best. At its worst it becomes trite, stilted and amateurish. There is nothing original here, with plot elements recycled from gimmicks that weren't so brilliant to begin with. (Angels and fortune tellers? Come on.) For the first half of the movie, I rooted for the actors and hoped to be rewarded for my patience. By the second half, I just wished for it to end already. My sympathies to the cast, who deserved a better vehicle for their talents.