I sat down to watch Stan Lee's Lightspeed today, having recorded it from the Sci-Fi Channel last night. I knew full-well that it was a made-for-TV movie, so I had no expectations regarding the special effects or anything along those lines. I also wasn't expecting knock-me-out-of-my-socks acting. (It IS television after all!)The credits start rolling and I was surprised to see the names of Lee Majors and Nicole Eggert. Majors, of course, is known for his role as the Six-Million Dollar Man and Eggert -- while probably most well-known for Baywatch -- caught my attention as a teenager appearing on Charles in Charge.
(Side Note: I rather enjoyed Charles in Charge. Between Eggert's attractiveness -- cut me some slack, I was a teenager then too! -- and Willie Ames' antics, I found the show rather refreshing. If wholly unrealistic.)
Anyway, I got about 30-40 minutes into Lightspeed before having to turn it off. It feels very much like a Stan Lee creation, having many of the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, hey-let's-throw-this-in-as-an-idea-to-see-how-it-flies hallmarks that made him famous in the 1960s. The problem with the film, though, is that the script-writer seemed to take little care to really elaborate on plot points that Stan may have glossed over, making for some somewhat jarring and questionable motives. Further, the director made frequent use of sped-up film and rapid-fire cuts to move the story along, to the extent that the first half hour seemed like it should have been a whole movie unto itself.
As I said, I turned it off part-way through as it seemed to have to hopes of getting better, so I can't comment on the full storyline. The acting was fair, to everyone's credit, but the script and direction were so poor as to be supremely distracting. I'd rank this out there with the made-for-TV Captain America movie from the late 1970s.
Let's hope Stan does better with tonight's debut of Who Wants To Be A Superhero? (Although, I have to admit that I'm awfully skeptical about that, too!)
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