One A Day: TV Grows Up

A-Team, Wonder Woman, Green Hornet - seems like every day you hear about a new movie being made out of an old TV show!  While many of them never make it out of development heck - there are plenty of small gems that became big screen succeses! 

Here's my pick for a full week's viewing of small screen shows that made the leap to the big leagues.   Remember to comment at the end with any shows to movies I might have missed and email me with the answer to this week's trivia question.  Warm up the TV and adjust your rabbit ears, we've got some movies to watch. 

Monday:  Charlie's Angels 

Though somewhat of a parody of the seventies TV series, Charlie's Angels is a fine example of a big screen version that works.  Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu play the newest members of the Townsend Detective Agency and they're a match made in heaven.  Totally different in style and temperament, each girl brings something cool to the table.  Lots of action and a great sense of humor keeps this and all of the Angels movies rockin' and rolling from beginning to end.

Tuesday:  The Brady Bunch Movie

Talk about parody!  This clever remake gives us Brady look-alikes still living the groovy seventies lifestyle even though it's the nineties.  Christine Taylor is dead on as Marsha, as are Shelley Long and Gary Cole as Carol and Mike Brady.  Michael McKean isn't very well used as the developer who wants to buy the Brady home, but hey, you gotta have a villain, right?  Look for tons of fun cameo appearances, including three of the original Monkees.  A warning though, this is NOT material for the whole family.  Sexual innuendo abounds.  Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!

Wednesday:  Starsky & Hutch 

Keeping with the parody theme we have the big screen version of the cult cop show.  Ben Stiller takes on the role of Starsky, the overly dedicated cop who really needs to take it down a notch.  He ends up partnered with the lax and slightly criminal Hutch and together they're on the trail of a drug dealer with a nifty new product to sell.  The saving grace in this movie is that it's more of homage to the original.  There are plenty of "winks" to fans of the series, including cameos by the original stars David Soul and Paul Michael Glaser.  It is played for laughs though so die-hard fans of the original may find this one not to their liking.

Thursday:  Miami Vice 

Let's move from the seventies to the eighties with the big budget blockbuster that had Jaime Foxx and Colin Farrell battling the drug cartels as Crockett and Tubbs.  Not quite as colorful as the TV series that spawned it, it's a great action flick with a sexy Latin vibe.  (Still, I miss the sherbet colored shirts and the shoes with no socks!)

Friday:  Serenity

Saturday:  Scooby Doo

 To pay homage to the Saturday morning cartoons we all watched as kids, check out the live action big screen version of Scooby Doo.  Fred, Daphne, Velma and Shaggy are all here and they are ready to investigate an island theme park that has an odd effect on its teenage visitors.  Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar and Linda Cardellini are all great in their roles, but Matthew Lillard IS Shaggy and his interactions with a digital Scooby are nothing short of amazing.  It's a cartoon come to life and it's really lots of fun.
 

Sunday:  Addams Family Values 

Finish up the week with one of my favorite TV shows gone to the big screen.  It's true that they're creepy and their spooky, but they're also hysterically funny!  Head straight for the second installment of this movie franchise which has Joan Cusack as a black widow out to marry Uncle Fester (Christopher Lloyd) for his money.  Numb3rs fans will get a kick out of seeing a very young David Krumholtz as a love interest for Wednesday (Christina Ricci) along with his TV mentor, Peter MacNichol as one of the most annoying camp counselors ever born.  When Cusack's character declares that she killed her parents because they bought her Malibu Barbie instead of Ballerina Barbie. . .well, that's the delightfully dark and sarcastic humor of The Addams Family.  It's a great movie.

So there's the week.  Seven small TV shows that rose to the challenge of the big screen.  What movies have I passed over that you'd like to see on the list?  Leave your comments here (along with your suggestions for future themes) and then email me with the answer to this trivia question:

This popular Oscar nominated actor starred as a Secret Service agent in the big screen version of a quirky sixties TV Western.  Can you name the actor and the movie?

Please email your answer so as not to spoil it for others who wish to guess and put the answer in the subject of the email. 

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Cynthia Boris, Movie Correspondent:

Cynthia's column, One a Day, published every Wednesday to Gather Essentials: Movies.  A published pop culture author and DVD reviewer, Cynthia lives in Orange County, California where she splits her time between her two favorite things - writing and the entertainment biz.

You can find all of Cynthia's columns at http://gather.com/oneaday

Keep up with Cynthia's other postings and Gather activity by joining her Gather network -- just click here http://cynthiab.gather.com and select the orange "Connect" button on the left-hand side of the page

You'll find Cynthia and other Movie Correspondents, plus celebrity content and plenty of other movie buffs at Movies.gather.com

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