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Disclaimer: I have never watched an episode of Firefly due to time restrictions so my review will not include any respective perspective. This review also contains no spoilers!

Monday night I had an opportunity to watch the preview release of Serenity. The film is a feature spinoff of the Firefly television series, however, it seems to stand quite nicely on its own. The fact that the distribution company was interested in some independent coverage of the preview event was an immediate hint that these folks had done something wonderfully non-standard, but I was not expecting quite this quality of film. This is not to say that it was an unusual SciFi or a new plot twist but it did not come off as canned or purely demographicly guided. Much to my amazement, many times I would see the first half of Hollywood formula and the director entirely chose a different second half. This made the film that much more enguaging and helped with the suspention of disbelief that I often have trouble with.

The specific class of story is a space western. In that way Serenity definately had a Cowboy Bebop feel to it. For those who have never seen Cowboy Bebop think Hans Solo type character and crew get caught up in a larger plot while trying to run some barely (or il) legal operation in a moderately small spaceship. Of course in the case of Serenity the larger plot involves a girl on board who is to be captured at all costs by powerful conspiritors. The film seldom stops the action and quips which should quiet those who did not like that aspect of Batman Begins. Eventhough I have not seen the TV series the characters were developed quite quickly and thoroughly. The opening scene provides the foundation and back story sufficient to carry the story as well.

The acting is hard to guage. In general the acting was enguaging and certainly the actors stayed in character. This is no doubt due to the time spent creating the Firefly series. However there were a few dialog exchanges that felt rather like forced volleys than natural conversations. This is very obvious in the final scenes and I will choose to blame editing. I could not help but notice a couple of doubing errors as well. These may be corrected for full theatrical release. That aside there were many lines delivered with Sean Connery - James Bond sauve and timing.

Overall I would have to give this movie a 8.5/10 in the genre targeted. I am definatly interested in DVD’s of the Firefly series now. On to another point about the prescreening itself I would just like to note how much more fun that was than a normal movie-going experience. Here is an idea for theater outlets - give people a reason not to stay home by making more medium size rooms with targeted audience:
Theater 10 showing Serenity for techies
Theater 11 showing 20 minutes of bizzare art and Serenity for people who normally go to the Ritz
Theater 12 showing Serenity for people who like to shout at the screen
Theater 13 showing Serenity for people who innapropriately brought young children

PS - Also seen with ZaMoose and SCSIwuzzy.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 28th, 2005 at 10:36 am and is filed under