STOP them before they make a TV show again!
For reasons I wish I understood, the Halmis – father and son, Robert and Robert, who have produced some of the worst TV miniseries in modern history – have done it again.
This time it’s the SciFi channel that’s let them run wild, rampant and ruinous with a miniseries called “Tin Man,” which they refer to as a “re-imagining” of the classic movie and tale, “The Wizard of Oz.”
Why they call it “Tin Man” is as puzzling as why these producers still can find work.
“Tin Man” is not just about the tin man (Neal McDonough) who, in this series, isn’t tin at all. (OK, he used to wear a tin badge.)
What about the other characters; a cowardly lion, a scarecrow and a wooden actress?
And then there’s the Wizard (Richard Dreyfuss), of course, who isn’t a carnival snake oil salesman here, but a junkie who lives in a city filled with hookers that looks like it was stolen from the set of “Cabaret.”
Is it Oz? Sort of. It’s now “reimagined” as “The O.Z.” – not to be confused with “The O.C.” which you probably won’t, because the O.Z. is filled with Nazis from outer space, flying, painted Pygmies and a witch with tattooed boobs that glow just before they shoot out nasty monkey monsters.
In addition to the glowing, monkey-shooting boobs, the bad witch also has bad breath that kills people. Breath Assure, honey?
The cast includes Zooey Deschanel as D.G., a reimagined Dorothy; Alan Cumming as Glitch, the not-scarecrow with a zipper head; Raoul Trujillo as Raw, a depressed and psychotic lion who gets tortured and has visions; and Kathleen Robertson as Azkadelia, the wicked witch from I don’t know where.
There is a point to this mess, but what it is, I can’t say.
On the upside, the special effects are, well, very special and very good and must have cost a bundle. Just to build Azkadelia’s S&M Cinderella outfits and shooting boobs must have broken the bank.
But the script is an amateurish mess. Tragic really, since the cast – given its star power – is certainly up to just about any challenge but this.
Take Dreyfuss, for starters. As the Wizard, he hams it up so badly behind a Shakespearean accent, he could use a nice glaze.
Cumming called it in and Deschanel seems never even to have picked up the phone.
It’s hard to know about Trujillo, because he’s trapped a fur suit braying things like, “Bad things happen here. We go now! Bad things!”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.