Return to Green Acres

If y'all grew up with the original TV series and its surrealistic humor, take a pass on this production...better yet, watch it once to just to learn one can't bring back the past. There's none of the off-the-wall humor of the TV series. Lisa Douglas (Eva Gabor) has to work hard to deliver stupid lines. Even Arnold Ziffel is phoning in his performance...although this Arnold is probably the tenth-great grandpig of the original. (Where's Cynthia, the basset hound??)

I watched this mainly to see if it was any good. There's two hours of my life I'll never recover.

Now, even though I've seen one-sentence reviews, I have to post 600 characters to put up mine. Thank the IMDB people for such discrimination.

While it was a treat to see the old cast back together, the film suffered from "Reunion" fever that plagued many of the reunion movies of the era. Hatching a silly plot involving spies and trying to stretch it into a two hour movie was a huge mistake.

If they had bothered to watch the old series they would have known that the deviation from the original was killing what they were making before they even filmed it!

The old show consisted of wacky characters that the audience cared about, not some crazy plot that drags the characters out of the places we like to see them in. I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it didn't even show the interiors of the characters homes, and in the case of "Green Acres," the old Haney Place (the Douglas's farm) and Druker's Store were practically characters in themselves.

Besides that, in updating us on the town of Hooterville they forgot to include anyone from "Petticoat Junction," or even the Shady Rest Hotel, for that matter! This was a cookie-cutter production designed to cash in on nostalgia for the series. The actors were great, the script a shambles, and sadly the last time we got to see Pat Buttram, Alvey Moore and Eva Gabor act together.

They should have left the good work that was the original series..alone.

I agree with the previous reviewer who said that this reunion movie must have been written by someone who had never seen the original show. In a way, Green Acres was like Seinfeld for the 1960s, in that there were no lessons or morals learned and very little seriousness or sentimentality - just lots of weird humor (except for some lovey-dovey scenes between Oliver and Lisa at the end of some episodes). This is also a show that had a lot of fun breaking the 4th wall, with characters making references to the opening credits and such. That said, what on earth were the writers thinking when they wrote this movie? The movie isn't even funny - did they forget that Green Acres was supposed to be a comedy? The plot is very cliched - a greedy business man conspires with Mr. Haney to buy everyone's property in Hooterville and turn it into a mall or something. This results in many serious, sappy scenes that have none of the wacky flavor of the original. We even have a "lesson," as Eb's teenage son learns to appreciate his rural hometown instead of thinking it's boring. We also have a romance between the Ziffels' niece and the businessman's son, which I think only makes the show drag even more. Stick with the original - the only reason to watch this movie is if you're curious to see how the cast looked after 20 years.

Apparently William Asher never watched any 60's TV besides Bewitched. Otherwise he'd have seen Green Acres at least once and had a clue how to direct "Return".

Pure garbage is place for this, lame story is a total miss. Jokes falling flat far and wide. Give me the original and let's pretend that Bill never tried.

This is the worst remake of anything I can recall.

It would have been much better to have made a 2 hour reunion of the cast to reminisce about the original show.

The writers must have worked from a list of character bios and reverse engineered this travesty while completely missing everything that made the series awesome. I'm sorry I watched it and will never make that mistake again.

I'm saddened by the negative user reviews posted about this tv reunion. I agree it wasn't the offbeat humor from the original series but it was still nice to see so many of the cast members together again. Also, I just can't believe Eddie Albert would trash this movie on a talk show or to anyone. I met him in the late 1980's and everyone or thing he spoke about was with an honest, pleasant, upbeat demeanor. In fact I've never read or heard any negative remarks about anyone in the cast. Enjoy it for what it is and not for what others think it should have been.