In 1983, a motley assortment of actors were assembled by a team of crack TV writers and sent to a TV series that was a successful as it was goofy. Today, these men are mostly forgotten but the characters they created live on. If you need a mindless way to blow a couple of hours, and if it’s playing at your cineplex—maybe you can go see The A-Team.
I never saw the original TV series, though something of a fan of Stephen Cannell’s work on “Maverick”“Rockford Files” and an admitted fan of the short-lived, never quite realized “Greatest American Hero”. (Actually, by 1983, I had already given up on the prime-time TV thing.)
I don’t have a whole lot to go on, therefore, as concerns the original compared to the movie version. There’s some corny patriotism, some absurd action, some silly character development—I think that all fits in with the original series.
As a summer movie, it’s not—well, it’s not boring. You can follow the plot and the action, and most of the action is pretty well laid out. It never really engages beyond an almost aggressively superficial level which makes one aspect of the movie very jarring to me.
In what is basically a comic book world of ridiculous stunts, tone is usually kept by minimizing any real sense of consequences for violence. (This is parodied in this “Family Guy” clip at about 2:25.) While that’s mostly done here, there is a plot point involving a character killing, and the killing is shown.
It’s rather seriously done and struck me as gratuitously brutal.
Anyway, the Boy was not displeased (which counts as fair prize from him for this type of movie), though the Old Man seemed a little grumpy. He thought it was corny, but in the same breath said it was like the old show in that regard—and he was a huge fan of the old show. So I think he liked it but something rubbed him the wrong way. (Maybe the passage of the past 30 years.)