I never watched The A-Team when it first aired, partially because I thought it
looked dopey, and mainly because I really wasn’t watching a lot of TV back in
the 1980s. It was still a few years before closed captions came out, and the
newly added stereo feature of my TV set made the sound so horribly distorted for
me that I simply could not hear what the actors were saying--no matter how hard
I tried to adjust the sound (and I wore headphones whenever I watched TV, just
as I do now). Therefore, I had pretty much quit watching TV--with the exception
of watching movies on VHS--for pretty much the entire decade. I ended my
self-imposed exile when Star Trek: The Next Generation first began to air.
But, as far as the A-Team was concerned, I pretty much figured I wasn’t missing
anything, and didn’t give it much thought--until the recent film, based on the
TV show, that came out. While I knew the basic premise and characters, I didn’t
have very high hopes for the movie. But I was pleasantly surprised to discover
this was an extremely enjoyable and funny film. Joe Carnahan, the film’s director,
handles the action and comedy with plenty of panache, including an over the top
sequence with a flying tank that, instead of coming off as just being very stupid,
plays superbly well. "Fun" seems to be the name of the game here; although
Carnahan still wisely treats his story and villains straight.
A great example of the humor involved is the scene when the A-Team, having
already escaped from prison, goes to a military hospital in order to spring
"Howling Mad" Murdoch (well-played by Sharlto Copley, from District 9). The gang send him a movie ahead of time to play for himself and the other patients in the psychiatric ward, complete with 3-D glasses. The alluring Jessica Biel (The Illusionist), playing a military investigator hot on their tail, arrives at the hospital, fully expecting them to break Murdoch out. She puts on the 3-D glasses just as a Humvee comes driving up onscreen (to the theme of the original A-Team series, no less), only to be surprised when a real Humvee comes crashing through the movie screen wall.
As this scene shows, the A-Team isn’t just funny, it’s downright witty, as well. Not only is it a great comedic moment that pays homage to the original series, but it also tweaks the nose of the current 3-D craze that Hollywood is so determined to shove down our throats. The casting, with Liam Neeson as Hannibal, Bradley Cooper as Face, and Quinton "Rampage" Jackson as B.A., is simply inspired. Other standouts in the cast are Brian Bloom as Pike, Patrick Wilson as Lynch, and Gerald McRaney as General Morrison. Sadly, this film underperformed at the box office when it was released during the summer of 2010, making a sequel unlikely. Which is a damn shame, because I would have liked to spend some more time with these guys.
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