The Critical Filmmaker

Showing my age here...  I used to watch SWAT when I was a kid and I loved it.  I also watched The A-Team, and while I watched it every week and was a big Stephen J. Cannell fan, I didn't love the show as much as his others (Hardcastle & McCormick and Riptide). The A-Team: I have to admit, I was ambivalent about seeing this film.  I'm not crazy about all the remakes of TV shows out there.  I think Hollywood needs to come up with some original ideas and stop reviving old films and TV shows (or copying from each other). When a friend told me she liked it, I decided to give it a chance.  Unfortunately, I don't share her enthusiasm.  It just didn't gel for me.  What made the show work was the banter and the charm.  This film was all cockiness with a couple of inside jokes here and there.  There was no cohesion for me.  It was just a big mess. SWAT Conversely, I liked SWAT.  I loved the old show, so I was expecting this one ...

William H. Macy wrote, produced  and starred in this film which also featured Meg Ryan, Jason Ritter and LL Cool J. It's a comedy about a down-on-his-luck producer who decides he's going to get one of the major studios to agree to film a movie about Benjamin Disraeli, only it has to star the recently-converted-to-Judaism action star played by LL Cool J. Elliot Gould is in this as a rabbi who also serves as technical advisor. There's a lot of jokes about Hollywood, lots of Hebrew spoken by LL Cool J, lots of deal-making scenes that are quite clever (and probably true), and a few really funny moments. It was an amusing film, but for the most part it didn't have the strength for a theatrical release.  I'm not sure if it has been screened anywhere since I saw it a few year ago.