If I were evaluating this film on it's own I'd likely rate it a '7', but with all the cool references to TV programs of the past and to earlier episodes of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone itself, I'm calling for a bonus point to bring it up to an '8'. Dan Aykroyd and Albert Brooks have some fun recalling TV theme songs of an earlier era in the prologue before Aykroyd's sudden transformation, and he's set up for a return engagement in the final scene as an ambulance driver. That was a neat way to book-end his appearances.
I have to advise the reader that "The Twilight Zone", the original series, is my favorite TV program of all time. There was just that certain something in the writing and execution of the stories that made so many of them memorable, even with more than a half century gone by now. For that reason, the three remakes in this film were particularly noteworthy. "Kick the Can" is one of my Top Ten favorites from the original series, and Scatman Crothers was a perfect choice for the role of the ever optimistic resident attempting to bring cheer to residents of the Sunnyvale Rest Home. His message is a timely one that should resonate with anyone about to step out of middle age - "The day we stop playing is the day we start getting old..."
The segment modeled on "It's a Good Life" ought to stimulate the memory banks of Twilight Zone fans. In the story, school teacher Helen Foley (Kathleen Quinlan) states to the shop owner that she's from Homewood, and traveling to Willoughby. There's also mention of a town named Cliffordville. In the TZ episode "Walking Distance", actor Gig Young portrays a man who travels into the past to his hometown of Homewood. Willoughby is the idyllic town setting for another episode titled "A Stop at Willoughby". And in yet another story, actor Albert Salmi attempts to rearrange things when he visits his old home town in "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville". The theme of each of these stories had to do with a wistful yearning for the past, maybe not so much as a particular place, but a state of mind that went with growing up in a simpler time without the stress of modern day pressures. That seemed to be a favorite Rod Serling theme, one which he revisited over the course of the series.
It would have been neat if William Shatner could have returned to reprise his character from "Nightmare at 20,00 Feet", but I have to say, John Lithgow did an admirable job as the airline passenger caught up in his own delusion. He looked like he was really losing it with the gremlin out there on the wing of the plane. I think Dan Aykroyd showed remarkable restraint on that drive to the hospital.
Now even though the first segment titled "Time Out" was an original and not a remake, a case might be made that it at least touched on a couple of Rod Serling originals. "Deaths-Head Revisited" was the story of a Nazi concentration camp officer forced to relive the horror of his past, while the Vietnamese jungle setting of the segment had some similarity to a TZ World War II story called "A Quality of Mercy", in which a military officer was forced to exchange places with the enemy, in that case, a Japanese soldier. The only thing in the first story I couldn't make a connection with was the Ku Klux Klan lynching, an idea that might have made for a unique Rod Serling story.
Be that as it may, I had some fun with this flick. The only thing I didn't care for was the goofy special effects with the monsters in "It's a Good Life", but then again, they were the constructs of a youngster's imagination, so anything goes I guess. Oh yeah, and in the "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", the pilot made an announcement at one point that the plane was flying at 35,000 feet. That's where having Shatner on hand might have come in handy.
I have to advise the reader that "The Twilight Zone", the original series, is my favorite TV program of all time. There was just that certain something in the writing and execution of the stories that made so many of them memorable, even with more than a half century gone by now. For that reason, the three remakes in this film were particularly noteworthy. "Kick the Can" is one of my Top Ten favorites from the original series, and Scatman Crothers was a perfect choice for the role of the ever optimistic resident attempting to bring cheer to residents of the Sunnyvale Rest Home. His message is a timely one that should resonate with anyone about to step out of middle age - "The day we stop playing is the day we start getting old..."
The segment modeled on "It's a Good Life" ought to stimulate the memory banks of Twilight Zone fans. In the story, school teacher Helen Foley (Kathleen Quinlan) states to the shop owner that she's from Homewood, and traveling to Willoughby. There's also mention of a town named Cliffordville. In the TZ episode "Walking Distance", actor Gig Young portrays a man who travels into the past to his hometown of Homewood. Willoughby is the idyllic town setting for another episode titled "A Stop at Willoughby". And in yet another story, actor Albert Salmi attempts to rearrange things when he visits his old home town in "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville". The theme of each of these stories had to do with a wistful yearning for the past, maybe not so much as a particular place, but a state of mind that went with growing up in a simpler time without the stress of modern day pressures. That seemed to be a favorite Rod Serling theme, one which he revisited over the course of the series.
It would have been neat if William Shatner could have returned to reprise his character from "Nightmare at 20,00 Feet", but I have to say, John Lithgow did an admirable job as the airline passenger caught up in his own delusion. He looked like he was really losing it with the gremlin out there on the wing of the plane. I think Dan Aykroyd showed remarkable restraint on that drive to the hospital.
Now even though the first segment titled "Time Out" was an original and not a remake, a case might be made that it at least touched on a couple of Rod Serling originals. "Deaths-Head Revisited" was the story of a Nazi concentration camp officer forced to relive the horror of his past, while the Vietnamese jungle setting of the segment had some similarity to a TZ World War II story called "A Quality of Mercy", in which a military officer was forced to exchange places with the enemy, in that case, a Japanese soldier. The only thing in the first story I couldn't make a connection with was the Ku Klux Klan lynching, an idea that might have made for a unique Rod Serling story.
Be that as it may, I had some fun with this flick. The only thing I didn't care for was the goofy special effects with the monsters in "It's a Good Life", but then again, they were the constructs of a youngster's imagination, so anything goes I guess. Oh yeah, and in the "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", the pilot made an announcement at one point that the plane was flying at 35,000 feet. That's where having Shatner on hand might have come in handy.