drrap

One of the more awkward moments for silver-suited aliens with funny hats! The borrowing of title music from The Day the Earth Stood Still (sans theremin) is always welcome, and Ross Elliott is great as the local sheriff. It's also noteworthy for being one of the TT episodes in which the villains -- or their pals, anyway --- directly threaten the present-day TT crew, commenting on their "primitive data processors"! Lastly, it's worth seeing as it's one of the few television episodes in which the late James Darren (Vic Fontaine on the holodeck in STDS9) is actually in space once again (or once before, as the case may be).

I've always had mixed feelings about P.T. Anderson -- on the one hand, he has a brilliant touch as a director, and as a fan of his dad's role as "Ghoulardi" on local Cleveland television growing up, I always had a soft spot for the kid. But this film is a puzzle: its gender politics are stuck in the 1950's along with its fashion choices (at one point, Day-Lewis's Woodcock crows "Don't say the word 'chic'!"), its main characters are utterly flat, and the only interesting changes are brought about by poisonous mushrooms. No one grows, no one really steps out of themselves; trapped within Anderson's brilliantly-framed shots, they talk, argue, raise their eyebrows, and sometimes noisily crunch their toast, world without end, amen. A film must go from one place to another; someone in it must grow or experience change; we have to be somewhere different at the end than at the beginning. Here all we have is beautiful stasis -- which ultimately make this film, despite its rich artfulness, an ugly one.

As an unabashed fan of the 1991 film, I came to this version ready for a fight -- more than one! Who dares tamper with a classic? But bit by bit, and moment by moment, I was enchanted all over again: the human performances "fleshed out" the old animated ones; the coggier Cogsworth and more limited Lumiere charmed me afresh with their differences from memory. The new songs, though surprising, fit remarkably well, and I never felt that the score missed a beat. And when all was added up, the sum was far more than any of the new and varied parts: this is a fresh masterpiece, beginning as a riff but ending with something much much more than a "cover" -- if Disney can do this as well with its other planned live-action/CGI versions, then count me in. This is a brilliantly-crafted film that honors and yet moves beyond its beloved original.