Huievest
Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.
Jim Sadur
This version of Red Dwarf is strictly a worthless footnote. The script is almost completely cribbed from the original British episode "The End" with a poorer cast, flat performances and nothing original to speak of.It is astonishing that Someone thought it useful to Americanize what was already a classic comedy on both sides of the Atlantic. That Someone must think all Americans are parochial morons who would be alienated by the original. This is yet another failed attempt to de-Anglicize a British hit. At least this version died before being officially aired.
Phracture
No wonder this never got past the pilot! The characters (with the exception of Kryten) are generic looking, acting, and speaking with none of the wackiness of the UK version; UTTERLY uninteresting.The jokes fall flatter than an amoeba in a centrifuge. Even the jokes ripped straight from the UK version are delivered so badly they don't even elicit a smile.No understanding whatsoever of UK RD's "trench humor". The music adds nothing.The whole mess is just... PUTRID BEYOND WORDS!Ho1ywood* just cannot seem to make any kind of comedy except banal machine-gun-rapid "spray stupid sex jokes and hope a few work", sort. Compared to this the minute long "Pigs in Space" segments of the Muppet Show were absolute masterpieces!* misspelling intentional
Nick G
I've seen both of the US pilots (the pilot and the promo) in rather fuzzy videos I downloaded off a website (which has since been ordered to remove all its downloads for legal reasons). This pilot has quite a few problems and some redeeming features, which I'll go through now.One major problem is the casting, and this applies to both pilots. As talented an actor as he is, Craig Bierko does not fit the image of Lister. The ideal Americanised Lister would have been someone less good-looking, who is preferably Hispanic. And the man who played First Officer Munson really annoyed me, for some reason. Apart from them, though, I have no problem with the cast for the first pilot. It's the second pilot (the promo) in which the cast needed serious alteration. I can't for the life of me understand why they replaced Hinton Battle with Terry Farrell. Hinton Battle was fantastic as the Cat, just as good as Danny John-Jules, and perfectly captured the Cat's character. Whereas Terry Farrell played a completely different Cat character: a fearless feline woman with a go-it-alone attitude. There was no real point in the change. And, as either Rob Grant or Doug Naylor said, "It's not funny if she says 'Hey, I'm fabulous-looking' because she is."And there's also the replacement of Chris Eigeman with Anthony Fuscle. Don't get me wrong, Anthony Fuscle was good. But Chris Eigeman was better.The second problem is that the first pilot is just 25 minutes long, including the credits sequences. The original BBC pilot was 30 minutes long, and with the added plot lines of Kryten's involvement, Lister and Kochanski's breakup and the "you gotta..." thing at the end, the pilot really ought to have been lengthened. In fact, it would have been better as a one-hour special (with about 45 minutes of content) - that way they might have been able to flesh out Rimmer's character a bit more, and make his resurrection as a hologram have more impact. The second pilot isn't meant to have a plot, really, it's just meant to be an introduction, but that left me a bit unsatisfied at the end. The third and fourth problems are the replacement of Rimmer's "H" with a silver sphere, and the theme music. Thankfully they were both changed in the second pilot. Now for the good points. The first pilot puts its 25 minutes to fairly good use. Robert Llewellyn, as always, is absolutely amazing as Kryten, and Jane Leeves plays a very good Holly (I suppose it's fortunate that the pilot never took off, though, because she wouldn't have been able to play Daphne on Frasier). The rehashed jokes are delivered fairly well, and the new jokes are for the most part very good (for example, Lister's line about his baseball cards and Kryten on reading the FIRE EXIT sign). The ending, with the "you gotta..." thing is very interesting indeed, as is Holly's video diary. Also, in the second pilot, the newly filmed "From Future Episodes" parts at the end is quite funny. So, in closing, Red Dwarf USA doesn't really measure up to the original BBC version. But, when judged on its own merits, it makes an okay TV show.
roximunro
I was surprised to see a US pilot for Red Dwarf, then shocked and saddened when I actually watched it. US Lister was so whitebread and unscuzzy. Rimmer snivels so little that I actually thought the actor would make a better Lister than the one I was watching. Cat no longer had his Little Richard-ish persona. It WAS nice to see the original Kryten (loved the eyeballs in the coffee gag) and Jane Leeves as Holly (*spark* ooh that one felt gooood) but they wouldn't have been able to save this US version from oblivion. As for pilot number two, which I've only seen a cast photo of, it was interesting to see Terry Farrell dressed up like a cat but it was far from being sound as a dollar-pound. Don't mess with perfection!
