Search Movie Review Archives

Following the demise of J.J. Abrams other hit show 'Felicity', he's created another ratings masterpiece 'Alias' (and brought over some of the cast). Basically 'Felicity: The Spy', the show stars Jennifer Garner ('Daredevil', 'Catch Me if You Can') as Sydney Bristow, a woman recruited right out of college to work for the CIA. Sydney's father also works for the CIA, and her mother is a double agent. The main idea of the show is to pretend to travel around the world so that Sydney can spit out sound bites of foreign languages and dress in all manner of ridiculous costumes while traveling 'in cognito'. Like 'Felicity', this is a show that is written by way of glaring jumps from points on a flowchart. That is, the plot only goes from one bizarre idea of what we want to do to another, and no idea is too ludicrous as long as it explains how we got from point A to point B. ***

The show makes great attempts at 'feints within feints', and is so caught up in the stream of providing mass appeal that it doesn't care how poorly these play out. Borrowing from the popularity of 'Buffy', it also has a lot of Sydney et al. fighting as much as possible, because the ratings have shown that a woman doing karate moves is solid gold. Unfortunately, even the hopeless fight choreography of 'Buffy' makes this show look like a home movie. If there's one thing on recent television you can't possibly believe, it's that Sydney could beat up anyone outside the fourth grade. The entire show follows a similar vein, taking itself so seriously that it becomes all the more ridiculous. 'Buffy' is camp, 'Felicity' should have been camp, 'Alias' is camp that doesn't realize it. Completely screwball plots abound, including hypnotizing CIA agents, quests for magic artifacts, and spins on every old gag from circa 60s spy movies like 'Modesty Blaise'. The acting is mostly comic, but never meant to be. Overall, it's mind-numbing filler for the intellectually challenged. Naturally, it's an absolute hit. ***

The second season focuses mainly on Sydney's mother and her escape from the CIA. That's the seasonal arc at any rate. The good guys and the bad guys get just about equal time, and roughly one-third of every show is devoted to Sydney's love life. The entire season could have easily been boiled down to one feature-length film, and it would have been a wise choice. On that level, there's some hope of an interesting story surfacing. Puffing the extremely limited plot ideas into an entire season worth of episodes turns the whole thing into the worst sort of joke. There is too much time to fill, and it gets filled with the most ludicrous twists and turns, just because we've got to do something. Fight scenes obviously fill part of the void, as they often go on for several long minutes at a time. ***

It's a strange mix of ideas, and one that obviously works if you're after a hit show, but it's the most inane sort of drivel. Spies who are set up as being extremely 'real', but who end up in what could only be described as 'high jinx'. These same spies then have dinner or 'hang out' ala any scene from 'Felicity'. It's far too much to take seriously, and far too serious to take any other way. -

The DVD picture quality is very good, but not quite what I was expecting. The picture quality seems to jump from almost movie quality to below normal television quality (think 'The Shield') depending on which location we're shooting in. I don't know if that is a result of the original filming process or something to do with the transfer, having never watched the show on television, but it's quite distracting. Certain episodes also seem to have an overall lower quality than others, and certain scenes that are especially dark suffer greatly from edge loss and fuzziness. Still, for television it's certainly no worse than average. ***

The sound, even though it is 5.1, is not especially great. The frequent songs come through very well, and the dialogue is very clear, but there seems to be very little thought aimed at sound design. There isn't much channel separation, and surrounds are minimal. This despite the fact that this is certainly a show that could make great use of surrounds and sound design in general.

The second season release of 'Alias' comes with a pretty solid selection of special features. Some of them are perhaps of marginal interest, such as the audio only interview spots from KROQ's Kevin & Bean radio show which features interview bites with J.J. Abrams, Victor Garber, Kevin Weisman, and Jennifer Garner (from the first season), but overall there is a nice helping of choices. ***

'The Making of The Telling' is a 45-minute 'Behind the Scenes' documentary on the production of the season finale. You read that right, 45 minutes. It might be hard to imagine a documentary that is actually longer than the thing it is a documentary of, and it might be equally hard to sit through, but here it is. It's a very detailed look at the production with a major emphasis on the stunts and special effects, and is pretty good for what it is. It's actually a nice production, and if this sounds like something you'd enjoy, you'll be in heaven. ***

'The Look of Alias' is a roughly 12-minute featurette that explores the fairly silly series theme of Jennifer Garner's disguises. Somewhere around half of the feature is dedicated to the trademark red wig from the first season, wherein Abrams admits to having lifted the idea from 'Run Lola Run', as if he'd been fooling anyone. ***

The set also provides some less interesting features. Seven deleted scenes are available, but they are only the sort of thing that are cut for time. There is a four-minute blooper reel that is occasionally funny. There are seven, count them, seven, television spots for the show. A four-minute promo spot gives us a look at the upcoming video game. If you have DVD-ROM capabilities, you can look at the scripts for two episodes of the show.