Once there was a man named Jason Lethcoe. Jason had a comic book mini-series called "Zoom's Academy For the Super-Gifted", which he later reworked into a prose book series. The book incarnation received good reviews, a loyal fan base, and became a moderate success.
The film rights were sold, and a film adaptation greenlit.
Then, Marvel Comics came forward with threats of legal action. A school for super-powered kids, learning to be heroes? Sounds like X-Men!
(In fact, it also sounded like ps238 and Sky High...but Marvel didn't care about a little indie comic like the former...and not even Marvel dared to invoke the wrath of Disney's lawyers!)
So...by the time Zoom was actually filmed, pretty much everything from the original concept was gone.
Save for the word "Zoom" and the notion that super-powered kids are involved.
Tim Allen plays Captain Zoom. He not only phones in the role, his boredom with the entire film is palpable.
Courtney Cox is forced to act as if she's feeling serious romantic sparks for Allen. She often gets a "trapped" look in her eyes.
Chevy Chase (well into his sixties, so it's no longer quite as funny as it used to be) does some pratfalls.
Rip Torn plays a sour-faced military guy. And seems ready to keel over at any moment. The poor guy looked so drained...
There are super-powered kids. Cool Dude. Scowling Girl. Fat Kid. Cute Girl.
Emma Thompson noted in the commentary for Nanny McPhee that it's all too easy to treat children as just -things- in a script instead of building them up into actual people.
These kids are eststablished as things, and remain so.
The plot (such as it is)
30 years ago the goverment exposed some teenagers to radiation and created the Zenith Project. Then they exposed them to radiation again and created a super-villain, who killed most of Team Zenith, leaving only Zoom as a survivor.
The super-villain then got trapped in some sort of dimensional rift...only now he's on his way back.
Zoom is kidnapped and told he has to train a new class of super-kids (mutants, I suppose. They don't need radiation for powers). He's not told about the threat, because the super-villain is his own brother.
It gets a bit confusing, here. There are several pop music training montages.
Allen doesn't care about the kids, until the moment the plot requires him to. He just suddenly starts caring. *shrug*
The kids get ugly, cheap-looking uniforms and learn how to turn bad CGI FX powers into...um...slightly more competent bad CGI FX powers.
The bad guy returns. Zoom realizes that if he runs around his brother REALLY fast, his brother won't be evil any more.
By George, it works!
Brief coda, end of movie.
I walked out wishing Jason Lethcoe had never sold the film rights.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
Rip Torn is still alive?!?
Posted by Puffy Treat (Member # 7210) on :
Yeah, but he doesn't look good. Posted by Vasslia Cora (Member # 7981) on :
When I first saw a preview for Zoom, I instantly decided that I would do every possible thing in my power to not see this movie. I like Tim Allen but I was quite sure he had choosen a flop to star in.
Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
We're gonna Zoom Zoom Zooma Zoom We're gonna Zooma Zooma Zooma Zoom... Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
Incidentally, Wendy's apparently got the rights for Zoom imagery on their Happy Meal equivalents. I wonder if someone in marketing is tying one end of his necktie to a roof beam, right about now.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I saw it earlier tonight, it wasn't THAT bad. Courtney Cox was basically playing Monica from Friends with some slight adjustments.
What happened in the movie made sense. When Tim Allen's character started actually caring made a lot of sense, and it was a good time for a transition....the problem is, the less than 2 hour movie covers 12 days of time in rather rapid fire plot unfolding. In the course of those 12 days, we're to believe that these kids who were just sent away from their families, are molded into a team by a crotchety old man with obvious bitterness issues and latent regret over his brother.
There's just WAY too much transformation taking place for me to believe that it could feasibly happen in that short an amount of time. The time ebbs away with nothing even happening for the first few days, but somehow the kids go from not knowing a thing about their powers to being totally in control of them.
Chevy Chase was ridiculous in the movie. Cutting his character would have subtracted nothing, and probably would have made it better, adding more time to let the plot actually breathe, rather than suffocating it.
All in all, it was Diet Sky High. Decent idea that was poorly, poorly laid out and tried to do way too much too fast. Tim Allen gave a decent to good performance, but then, he had very little to work with. Given the material and character he was playing, I think he did a marvelous job of trying to give the part life.
Posted by IanO (Member # 186) on :
Lame. Took my boy to see it last night. It was painful to see Courtney Cox in this film, as Rip Torn (who usually has such a good sense of humor) and Chevy Chase. I kept thinking, 'These people auditioned for this?' Totally on about Allen phoning in his role. And the transformation montages were so forced, especially since it was only 12 days. And the vortex to turn Connor good? Where'd they pull that explanation from? Almost as bad a "Thunderbirds." Seriously. Not quite that level of suck. I could stand it, but just barely.
Posted by Puffy Treat (Member # 7210) on :
What happened in the movie made sense. When Tim Allen's character started actually caring made a lot of sense, and it was a good time for a transition
How? Kidnapped, embittered man forced to babysit a set of total strangers, associate with a woman who shows signs of obsession, and gets chewed out whenever he points out that putting little kids into combat situations sounds sort of...wrong.
Having him soften because Lisp Lass had a bad dream one night and the other kids pout and fuss at him a lot makes little sense, emotionally or logically.
Anyway, there -was- a good idea at the core of this concept, better than Sky High-lite, but they changed it from the source material so severely that you'd never know it.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I didn't say they pulled it off well, but it had to be done sometime, and that as good as any. And if the cute little kids tugging at his heartstrings, and actually getting the older guy to identify with him wasn't going to get him to come over, then nothing at all would.
It wasn't JUST because they were all grumpy at him for not caring, he started to care when he started to identify with them. They pulled him back in time to a point where he wasn't so bitter, angry and hurt, and he opened up. That much makes sense. I just thought it was silly that it all happened so fast.
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