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http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/movies/15harry.html

How does this review embarrass its author? Let me count the ways:

1) It says that director David Yates “does a fine job…nimbly shifting between the action and the adolescent soap operatics.” There is nothing nimble about Yates’s direction in this plodding, perpetually-missing-the-point effort, whose pacing is at best poor execution and at worst mind-blowing incompetence. That Yates did slightly better in this latest installment than in its predecessor is hardly saying much.

2) It says that screenwriter Steve Kloves “has done an admirable job” of adapting the source material. The truth is that every Potter script Kloves has penned has been weak to one degree or another — something I’m happy to forgive, considering the difficulty of the task — but this was by far the weakest of his efforts, filled with baldly irrational departures from canon and clumsy writing of pivotal character scenes.

3) It refers to actor Michael Gambon, who plays Albus Dumbledore, as “invaluable.” In fact, it would be hard to overestimate how thoroughly Gambon has failed to grasp the essence of the character he plays. (It’s really too bad that Richard Harris, who did a substantially better job with Dumbledore in the first two films, died before he could play out this critical part for the series.)

4) It calls young actors Hero Fiennes Tiffin and Frank Dillane, who play Tom Riddle, “excellent.” It’s hard to blame them for what is likely Yates’s and Kloves’s fault, but really, nearly every detail of their portrayal of this character is wrong. Christian Coulson, too old for the part now, was far better.

The funny thing is that the review isn’t a positive one at all — but it seems that the reviewer felt compelled to throw the filmmakers a proverbial bone while concluding that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is “an afterthought” and “filler,” while its stars “have grown up into three prettily manicured bores.” Indeed, the review perhaps undersells the series’s anchoring trio just a bit; I agree Rupert Grint is a waste of screen time (and has been for years), but Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson have developed a decent on-screen chemistry, and their scenes together are among the few bright spots in this otherwise tedious and uninspiring endeavor.

I’m watching Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie. It’s everything I could possibly want from it, and more. (I’ve seen it plenty of times, of course, but not since the late 90s.)

Indeed, MMPR:TM seems to have many of the key features you want in a feature film version of a beloved television show:
–noticeably better production values
–a villain who is a clear step up from the villains in the show, played by an earnest actor with personality (think Alice Krige in Star Trek: First Contact)
–a serious threat to a primary character (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, probably the best film adaptation of a children’s television show ever*, featured a double whammy: Splinter and Raphael)
–a newly created supporting character with serious sex appeal (interesting tidbit: in MMPR:TM, this character, Dulcea, was nearly played by Mariska Hargitay; one can only wonder what irreparable damage this would have done to her then-fledgling, now-thriving career)
–new technology and/or weapons (like, say, Rocky’s Power Scope or Kimberly’s Pterodactyl Thunder Whip; I think the Enterprise-E takes the cake here)
–pseudo-memorable one-liners that children are guaranteed to repeat when they act out scenes from the movie (“Yo fossil man! I’ve got a bone to pick with you!” — it is an immutable law of nature of that >90% of these lines must be puns)
–a big-budget score
–big-budget costumes
–big-budget effects (this one, especially, is relative)

But MMPR:TM also suffers from some shortcomings, many of which are again common in this genre:
–a homogenization of the members of an ensemble cast (Billy Cranston‘s trademark geekiness and Deanna Troi‘s empathic ability, for example, are nowhere to be found on the big screen), rendering most characters little more than narrative placeholders; this happens because a 90-minute film can often only accommodate details that drive the narrative without leaving uninitiated audience members confused, while a ~10- or 20-hour season has plenty of room for character development (though TMNT, admirably, managed to strike a balance)
–little snafus, like having the Rangers morph out of order
–little things that production constraints demanded would be just different enough from the show to annoy you, like Goldar‘s face or Alpha 5‘s voice

The final point I’ll make is that there’s a reason I kept having to repeat the same examples in this post; the list of television shows that have made the jump to the big screen is quite a bit smaller than the list of films that have been adapted for television (hell, they’re even doing this with 10 Things I Hate About You). It’s not easy to do at all, let alone to do it right. Power Rangers in particular must have seemed risky because the source material was uncommonly economical (at least half of every episode was dubbed, reused footage from the show’s Japanese progenitor), but if IMDb’s financials are to be believed, the movie was a very strong performer for Saban Entertainment. The next attempt we’ll likely see is Fox’s upcomingArrested Development movie, which I think we can expect to do fairly well at the box office without being much of a good film (as I heard was true of Sex and the City).

So, do you have a TV show, present or past, that you’d like to see as a feature film?

*I had to add the qualifier “children’s,” because the best overall is almost certainly The Fugitive, with Mission: Impossible being a close second.