ho doesn't know the lore of fairy tales and the promise of living happily ever after? But what happens to Snow White after Prince Charming saves the day?
That's what Virginia (Williams) and her father, Tony (Larroquette), discover when they're inadvertently pulled into the court intrigues of a fairy-tale world in a parallel universe. Their ordinary lives as a waitress and janitor, respectively, take an extraordinary turn, all because of a coincidence. Or was it?
When Virginia accidentally runs into a dog in Central Park, she knows there's something different about him. Virginia's very perceptive: until hours before, the dog had been Prince Wendell, ruler of the Fourth Kingdom. A scheming queen has forced Wendell and the dog to trade bodies. Now the queen is using her Wendell imposter to capture the throne in a bid to become ruler of all the Nine Kingdoms. And Wendell has escaped through a magic mirror to contemporary New York City.
In hot pursuit of Wendell are Wolf (Cohen), a werewolf who's under the queen's spell, and three trolls. Virginia, Tony, Wendell and Wolf are forced back through the magic mirror. Meanwhile, the trolls are busy claiming the fabled 10th Kingdom--Manhattan--as their own.
Thanks to a trick of magic, Tony can communicate with Wendell, and quickly becomes the dog's protector. But although they want to help Wendell, Virginia and Tony must also obtain the magic mirror. Without it they'll never be able to return home.
Their travels bring them in contact with other colorful characters recognizable from fairy tales. But as Wolf becomes ever more aggressive in pursuing Virginia, Tony must find new strength, and Virginia must learn how to face the pain caused when her mother abandoned her.
Troubled times, troubled miniseries
The 10th Kingdom is an ambitious project, to be sure. Even the opening credits are amazing--watching the Manhattan skyline morph into a lush, fantastic kingdom is something that every New Yorker fantasizes about after a tough day in the subways. Unfortunately, the 10-hour miniseries doesn't live up to its ambition. The leisurely-paced story could easily have been told in about three fewer hours, even keeping all of the tangents and journeys that sidetrack Virginia, Tony and Wolf from their goal.
Perhaps that's part of the problem with this show--so much is overdone that viewers will come to expect more, or better, than what they get. Across the board the acting is over the top. The awful accents of the three Troll kids (played by Dawnn Lewis, Jeremiah Birkett and Hugh O'Gorman) might even make some people yearn for the return of Star Wars' Jar Jar Binks. But Camryn Mannheim gives a nice turn as Snow White.
This isn't to say that Williams, Cohen and Wiest, especially, don't have moments--across a ten-hour miniseries, they'd be hard pressed not to. In fact, the same can be said of the entire miniseries--fanciful stories like this are in short supply these days, and there are moments of fun and wonder as the heroes travel the land.
But the writing just doesn't flow as it should, unlike the stunning and rich visuals, which include luscious cinematography and complex set design. The conclusion is predictable after the second segment, and Virginia and Tony are drawn so two-dimensionally that it's hard to reconcile their presence in this odd world. This miniseries is worth watching only while doing something else; otherwise there are better ways to spend 10 hours.
As fun as it is to hear the familiar names--Gretel the Great (of Hansel and Gretel fame), Queen Riding Hood, Lady Rapunzel--those names are better left to the annals of fairy tale history
-- Melissa
nto Pitch Black is an hour-long companion special to the
USA Films feature film Pitch Black, which opened February
18. It tells the story of how, in the distant future, the transport ship Hunter Gratzner fell out of the sky, its crew members
were awakened from hypersleep, and a bound and gagged prisoner, Riddick
(Diesel), escaped. Nineteen weeks later, broken transmissions arrive from a search and
rescue team that has landed on the desert planet T2 to
discover the fate of the starship. The transmissions are beamed to an investigator (Gant), who has been assigned to figure out what happened to the ship, to the team that went after it, and to Riddick.
The investigator views video clips of Riddick's psychological evaluation that paint a portrait of an extremely intelligent but
ruthlessly cruel killer whose eyes have been "shined"--enhanced for night
vision. The investigator views Riddick's escape from prison,
his recapture and his placement aboard the Hunter Gratzner for
shipment.
The investigator also hires an electronically enhanced tracker (Saum) to
help find Riddick. "Not all passengers on the ship are accounted for," the
investigator tells the tracker. The investigator gives details of the
ship's captain, Fry (Radha Mitchell), and Johns (Cole Hauser), a bounty
hunter dispatched to find Riddick.
The tracker learns that the search and rescue team found wreckage,
bodies and evidence that the survivors were partly consumed. But the
search was never completed, and all that remains are a few
transmissions from the planet. But the tracker has her own ideas on how to profit from the search. She incapacitates the investigator to steal his data and pursue the job on
her own. Despite this betrayal, the investigator warns her that the danger on the
planet is worse than she can imagine.
A narrative as opaque as night
This special comes in the wake of The Blair Witch Project and its
companion SCI FI special, Curse of the Blair Witch, which made
use of new footage and clips from the film to enhance the movie's back
story and generate enthusiasm for it. SCI FI mounted a different kind of special for the film Galaxy Quest: a mock 20th-anniversary special for the
eponymous TV show featured in the movie.
Unlike Curse, which was an organic outgrowth of the movie (it
used outtakes from the film and new footage), or the Quest special, which mined
the film's humor, Into Pitch Black seems like an unnecessary
addition. It creates its own sketchy narrative as an armature on which
to hang background information about the movie and its characters, as
well as to showcase judiciously edited clips from the film.
The slim story, centering on the investigator and the tracker, is
forced, and the production values are minimal. The special looks all the
cheesier when compared with the film's clips, which are richly
photographed and feature state-of-the-art special effects. There are some creative graphics and an interesting use of video
inserts, and there's also an Alien-meets-cyberpunk aesthetic at
work, but it's basically window dressing. The most interesting portions of this puzzling special are the
snippets of film that suggest an intriguingly spooky twist on the
monster-in-the-dark SF genre. The back story of Riddick is also
illustrated in graphic images, leaving the viewer eager to meet the
man himself at some point. But overall Into Pitch
Black is jittery, schizophrenic and downright confusing.
Unless a movie naturally lends itself to a creative TV companion
special, I'd favor the old-fashioned kind: interviews with the cast and
crew, behind-the-scenes footage, how-did-they-do-it special effects
shots, etc.
-- Patrick
ho doesn't know the lore of fairy tales and the promise of living happily ever after? But what happens to Snow White after Prince Charming saves the day?
nto Pitch Black is an hour-long companion special to the
USA Films feature film 
