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argument can be made that the 2003 television movie "Riverworld" could
have been a decent (and perhaps even good) science fiction film if approached in
the correct manner in the first place. Alas, a limited budget, an unimaginative
script, and the Sci Fi Channel label has all but doomed Kari Skogland's
"Riverworld" to the bin of films that should never have been made in
the first place, even as a pilot for a would-be TV series that never came to
fruition. The film actually starts off quite well, with American astronaut Jeff
Hale (Brad Johnson) finding himself killed while orbiting the Earth in a
shuttle, only to be resurrected along with all the human beings who ever lived,
on an alien planet created for reasons unknown by a mysterious species.
Hale isn't the only one on Riverworld; he's joined
by the genteel Alice (Emily Lloyd), the Holocaust victim Lev (Jeremy
Birchall), and enslaved African Mali (Karen Holness). Later, after
finding themselves rounded up and captured by a local warlord (another
reincarnated soul who has carved himself out a fiefdom in Riverworld,
where apparently the makers of the planet have left everyone to their
own devices), Hale and company meets Monat (Brian Moore), a humanoid
extraterrestrial who had the misfortune to die while on Earth. Monat
informs Hale that the Earth has since been destroyed, so even if they
could somehow manage to escape Riverworld, where would they go
"back" to?
Mind you, not that such monumental questions as,
"If this isn't Heaven or Hell, and Earth is no longer an option,
what is to become of us?" has anything to do with
"Riverworld". Once Hale is captured, the entire movie becomes
a camp version of an average "Xena" episode. Instead of angry
Gods, we have mysterious aliens that show up for about 30 seconds of
total screentime, while the human villain is Nero, the former Roman
emperor who has plans to turn Riverworld into another empire. It's up to
Hale and a local resistance leader named Sam (Cameron Daddo) to stop the
mad despot, although the Southerner Sam is more concerned with finishing
up his riverboat.
"Riverworld" is based on a series of
fantasy/sci-fi novels by Philip Jose Farmer, whose version of Riverworld
is more ambitious and grander in scope than the film version. Like most
of the Sci Fi Channel's "original" movies, the script by
Stuart Hazeldine makes as much logical sense as one of their killer
snake, or rat, or mutated ant movies. And this is not even taking into
account the film's premise of an alien world where humanity's souls are
reincarnated -- that much, I'll readily give the show. That's how
logic-challenged most of the Sci Fi Channel's original movies are.
Mind you, I'm not one to stand against nonsensical, but
entertaining films. The problem with "Riverworld" is that it's
just not very good. Questions and nitpicks abound, such as: how did
these bewildered souls, some from periods of human history where
"high-tech" means a stone wheel barrel, quickly grasp the idea
of advanced alien technology? Or the fact that the girl who was enslaved
by Portuguese traders hundreds of years ago is the first one to figure
out how to work the magical canisters. Or that for a Roman emperor, Nero
acts suspiciously like your average cop movie punk, including that clichéd
"using the girl as a shield and forcing the hero to drop his
sword" gag. How B-action movie of him.
Even by the
mediocre standards of what it means to be a Sci Fi Original Movie,
"Riverworld" comes up short. The books by Farmer might have
been great fun, but the movie version is poorly condensed, and the
focus, which should have been on the aliens, instead involves lousy
gladiator matches and painful fight choreography and plot holes. And
when I say "plot holes", I'm not even talking about the film's
fantastical premise -- I'm talking about characters vanishing and
appearing at will, lame plot revelations, and just general poor episodic
TV-level writing.
True to its pedigree as a pilot for a proposed series
that never found its way to the small screen, "Riverworld" has
the look and feel of a movie made specifically for TV. In that respect,
you could probably forgive it for being so pedestrian. Almost. No doubt
"Riverworld" the TV show would have progressed in the vein of
the recent "Lost World" series, with the crew of Sam's
riverboat encountering the rest of Earth's reincarnated souls as they
travel down Riverworld's seemingly endless river. "The Lost
World" was never much of a TV show, and judging by this 90-minute
pilot, a "Riverworld" series probably wouldn't have been any
better.
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