“Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” may be all everyone can talk about this week, but that doesn’t do us much good at the CraveOnline Film Channel. We’ve talked the Marvel Studios movies to death already, so we’ve decided to pull a switcheroo and devote this week’s Top This to the best movies based on TV shows. Take that, synergy.
The approach to adapting a TV series into a movie varies wildly, from direct spin-offs of the original series featuring the original cast members, to outright remakes made years later, to satirical takes on the source material that poke fun at the show in a modern context. All of these are fodder for this week’s Top This, but we’re limiting our picks to only one theatrically released film per franchise, because otherwise half the list would have “Monty Python,” “Muppet,” “Mission: Impossible” or “Star Trek” in the title. This is our opportunity to talk about some films that don’t always get the recognition they deserve for bringing classic (and not-so classic) television series to the big screen with style, humor and/or genuine thrills. So let’s take a look, shall we?
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
The 25 Best Movies Based on TV Shows
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25. George of the Jungle (1997)
An unlikely comedy hit if ever there was one, George of the Jungle adapts the vaguely-remembered cartoon series into an even more cartoonish Tarzan riff starring Brendan Fraser's goofy grin and implausible pecs. The plot is something about Thomas Haden Church being a douchebag, we've long since forgotten about that, but John Cleese plays a gorilla and there is nothing wrong with that.
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24. Charlie's Angels (2000)
We're not sure if forcing Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu into unironic fetish outfits while they solve crime is feminist or not (we're leaning towards "not"), but McG's first Charlie's Angels film is an enjoyably campy bit of nonsense that pits the three heroines against a disco-dancing hacker with a grudge against their employer, Charlie. Bill Murray co-stars, for some reason, but the real draw is the good-natured tone Charlie's Angels pulls off even while it wallows in lowest common denominator sensuality.
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23. Dragnet (1987)
Loosely based... strike that, extremely loosely based on the hit, no-nonsense cop show "Dragnet," the comedy remake finds by-the-book Det. Friday (Dan Aykroyd), the nephew of the original "Dragnet" protagonist, teaming up with the renegade Det. Streebeck and taking down a religious cult pumping drugs into Los Angeles. Over the course the film they will both wear goat-leggings, and you will definitely laugh.
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22. 21 Jump Street (2012)
The film version of 21 Jump Street abandons the original series' serious overtones and after-school messaging, becoming instead a whimsical buddy cop movie about how quickly generations change. Channing Tatum plays a teenaged bully who teams up with his nerdy target when they join the force, but their big undercover sting at a high school finds the paradigm completely shifted. Nerds rule, jocks are dismissed as neanderthals and everyone gets a good laugh from the big cameos at the end.
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21. Maverick (1994)
Richard Donner's classy remake of "Maverick" brings James Garner back as a lawman dogging charismatic card shark Mel Gibson as he treks to a $500,000 poker game. Jodie Foster gets a rare opportunity to play both funny and sexy as the con woman who gets between them. Witty (if a little smug), Maverick plays a fair hand.
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20. Serenity (2005)
Future Avengers director Joss Whedon was still finding his legs with Serenity, a spin-off of the failed sci-fi series "Firefly" that found longevity and a diehard fanbase on DVD. The resulting film is a little clunky, and maybe even impenetrable to non-fans, but anyone who already loved the outlaw crew of smugglers and their struggle for independence in the dystopic future loves their first, and probably only big-screen adventure. "I am a leaf on the wind" still brings a tear to our eyes.
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19. A Very Brady Sequel (1996)
The first Brady Bunch Movie turned heads with its unexpectedly meta conceit, that the impossibly good-natured heroes of the hit sitcom survived into the present day unaltered and completely unaffected by modern cynicism. But the sequel takes everything to another level, with Tim Matheson playing Carol Brady's long lost husband, wrecking the family dynamic and sending siblings Greg and Marcia flying into each other's confused, pubescent arms. It's completely wrong, so why does it feel so right?
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18. Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)
Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, John Landis and George Miller teamed up for the four installments of this anthology horror feature, and at least two of them are genre classics. Dante's adaptation of "It's a Good Life" transforms the all-powerful id of a psychic child into a phantasmagoria of malevolence, and Miller's version of "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" puts the original to shame thanks to a completely unraveling John Lithgow and a terrifying gremlin on the wing of a plane. But Spielberg's installment, "Kick the Can," is an impossibly saccharine installment that brings the whole film down a few notches on our list.
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17. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
The first of the decreasingly witty "Police Squad" spin-offs finds Airplane! star Leslie Nielson on the trail of a Manchurian Candidate-style political assassination subplot, accidentally molesting the Queen of England and calling the worst baseball call in sporting history. Plus, O.J. Simpson kicks the crap out of himself for minutes on end, to the delight of everyone before, and after, his rise to infamy.
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16. Batman: The Movie (1966)
The 1960's "Batman" TV series fell out of favor after the character's gritty resurgence in the late 1980s, but if you can somehow bring yourself to find a grown man in a bat costume funny, Batman: The Movie holds up remarkably well. Adam West and Burt Ward take down a cavalcade of outlandish baddies with a ridiculous plan involving dehydrated politicians, penguin submarines and... oh, forget it. It's nonsense, but it's a lot of fun, and "Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb," is probably the funniest line in comic book movie history.
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15. Mission: Impossible III (2006)
Mission: Impossible III may not have the set piece highlights of the first film or Ghost Protocol, but unlike the other two great films in this franchise, it doesn't have any real flaws either. A highly unusual bad guy played by Philip Seymour Hoffman forces Ethan Hunt to find a MacGuffin called "The Rabbit's Foot," and along the way his IMF team breaks into The Vatican, fights off a spectacular drone strike and races against time to diffuse the bombs surgically implanted in their heads.
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14. Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
The best film based on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" (we'll get to the original series later), Star Trek: First Contact used the ongoing conflict with cybernetic Borg as an exciting backdrop for Captain Picard's long-simmering post-traumatic stress, Data's perpetual temptation towards humanity and a welcome time-traveling trip to the dawn of the Federation. Some say Picard is acting out of character (we'd dispute that), but there's no denying that the "Next Generation" movies, sadly, never got any better than this.
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13. Miami Vice (2006)
Michael Mann's adaptation of his own TV series may have been too deliberately paced for audiences who actually saw the trailer, which misadvertised Miami Vice as a balls-out action thriller, but it deserves to be rediscovered as one of the acclaimed director's most stylish affairs. Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx play Crockett and Tubbs, undercover cops impersonating drug runners in pursuit of a South American kingpin. Mann lets you drink in the atmosphere until the screen explodes with violence, and then lets the atmosphere sink in once again until the next big turn.
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12. Wayne's World (1992)
Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar started lip-synching to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," and we haven't stopped loving them since. The "Saturday Night Live" heroes came to theaters in a somewhat contrived tale that gives Mike Myers and Dana Carvey just enough structure to let fly with wonderfully random silliness like product placement riffs and seduction scenes entirely in Cantonese.
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11. The Muppet Movie (1979)
The Muppets' first adventure on the big-screen is still arguably their best, showing how the unlikely gang got together for the first time and defeated the evil, frog leg-shilling Charles Durning in the process. Paul Williams' songs are standouts - especially "Rainbow Connection" - and the celebrity cameos are the best of the whole franchise. Movies don't get much cuter.
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10. Addams Family Values (1993)
Addams Family Values upped the ante after the first hit Addams Family movie introduced the outwardly monstrous clan with ironically loving relationships. The plot's still contrived - Uncle Fester falls prey to the gold-digging Joan Cusack - but the twisted humor is the best, and shipping Wednesday and Pugsley to a summer camp for WASPs leads to pure, vicious comic gold.
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9. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)
"South Park" came to the big screen with a sweeping musical about censorship and "South Park" itself. Canadian fart enthusiasts Terence and Philip stand-in for Trey Parker and Matt Stone as American audiences respond with outrage and radical political movements to save children from their harmless, profane humor. Only Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman can save the world... by using more profanity than ever before. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut is smart satire from start to finish, and the songs are arguably the best of any movie musical of the 1990s. What would Brian Boitano do...?
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8. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
Unappreciated in its time, David Lynch's prequel to the short-lived cultural phenomenon "Twin Peaks" shows exactly what happened to Laura Palmer in the days leading up to her tragic murder. It's just as surreal as you'd expect - moreso, especially when David Bowie makes an inscrutable cameo - but it's also a powerful horror film. Laura Palmer's fate is inevitable, but every frame makes us wish there was some way to stop it from happening. Worse, every frame denies us that satisfaction.
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7. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)
Bruce Timm's celebrated "Batman: The Animated Series" came to the big screen in the quickly forgotten but eventually celebrated Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, which showed Bruce Wayne's origin for the first time in the series, and smartly dramatized his inner conflict. Does he really want to be Batman? Could falling in love really change him? Mark Hammill really zings as the Joker, and the mystery of "The Phantasm," while a little obvious, bears all the tragedy of a classic Batman tale.
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6. The Blues Brothers (1980)
The hit "Saturday Night Live" characters broke out into a film that featured all the great musical performances we expected, and many we didn't, from unforgettable guest stars Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, James Brown and Cab Calloway. But the lovable anti-heroes really wowed us with a string of incredible car chases that have rarely been topped, wrecking shopping malls and what looks like every cop car in Chicago over the course of Jake and Elwood's lighthearted, hilariously destructive "Mission from God."
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5. Traffic (2000)
Steven Soderbergh won a Best Director Oscar for this sweeping, confrontational drama that tackles the war on drugs from multiple angles. Michael Douglas plays the politician whose daughter succumbs to addiction, Benicio Del Toro plays the Mexican cop working cases from the bottom rung, and Catherine Zeta-Jones plays the wife of a drug kingpin who follows in her husband's criminal footsteps. Based on the British mini-series "Traffik," Sodebergh's version became a distinctly American production, with celebrated performances and dramatic punches that hit every side of the ongoing conflict in the gut.
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4. The Untouchables (1987)
Brian De Palma transformed the long-running television series about real-life detective Elliot Ness into a sumptuous, broad epic about fighting crime in Prohibition Era Chicago. Kevin Costner is the charismatic hero, Sean Connery is his unlikely mentor, Robert De Niro devours the scenery as Al Capone, and Brian De Palma pulls out all the stops in the instant classic "Odessa Steps" shootout and the climactic rooftop chase between Elliot Ness and the vile (and wildly historically inaccurate) Frank Nitti.
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3. The Fugitive (1993)
The hit TV series "The Fugitive" stretched out Dr. Richard Kimble's search for the one-armed man who killed his wife for four seasons. Andrew Davis's movie adaptation captures all the thrills in a little over two hours, with a pulse-pounding train crash and sparks flying between Harrison Ford as the title hero and the Oscar-winning Tommy Lee Jones as the U.S. Marshal out to capture him. Smart writing, tense editing and a story that now seems to outshine the original, The Fugitive earned an Oscar nomination for Best Picture... a rare feat for a thriller.
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2. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)
The second film in the long-running Star Trek film franchise got everything right, rewarding longtime fans with an tearjerking story between Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, and a fan-favorite villain who brings the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise to the brink - and ultimately over the precipice - of their greatest failures. Exciting, thoughtful and bristling with memorable moments, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is our pick for the best serious film ever based on a TV series.
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1. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
The sketch comedy series "Monty Python's Flying Circus" had traveled to the big screen before, and it would head back again in the equally wonderful The Life of Brian, but this 1975 classic managed to overshadow the beloved television series with some of the comedy troupe's best material ever, and a heaping helping of historical commentary to boot.
With Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the comedians Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam cemented their place in cinematic history as some of the funniest people ever captured on celluloid, and crafted an unforgettable comedy in the process. Hell, even casual fans can quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail from beginning to end.
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