{"id":2462,"date":"2011-03-08T18:38:29","date_gmt":"2011-03-08T23:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=2462"},"modified":"2011-03-15T02:04:02","modified_gmt":"2011-03-15T06:04:02","slug":"film-too-good-to-be-true-1988","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=2462","title":{"rendered":"Film: Too Good to be True (1988)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>T to U<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Weak \/ DVD Transfer: n\/a \/ DVD Extras: n\/a<\/p>\n

Label: n\/a\/ Region: n\/a \/\u00a0Released: n\/a<\/p>\n

Genre: TV Movie \/ Film Noir<\/p>\n

Synopsis: In this remake of Leave Her to Heaven, a woman’s obsessive’s love for a novelist nearly destroys his life (plus a good chunk of his family).<\/p>\n

Special Features: n\/a<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

TV movies had been part of network programming since the sixties, but it wasn\u2019t until the eighties that the format blossomed and became a monthly event on the major networks, sometimes including two-part mini-series based on mystery novels and crime books. The format was given further push from cable TV stations, in need of boosting their own content as well as creating cheap productions they could sell to international stations and syndicated channels.<\/p>\n

There had been the odd TV remake of a classic noir film in the past \u2013 Don Siegel\u2019s The Killers<\/strong> (1964), Jack Smight\u2019s Double Indemnity<\/strong> (1973), and John Badham\u2019s remake of Les Diaboliques<\/strong>, Reflections of Murder<\/strong> (1974) \u2013 but the eighties sparked a few new productions, such as HBO\u2019s This Gun for Hire<\/strong> (1991), and A&E\u2019s Too Good to be True<\/strong> (1988), the latter the second filmed version of Ben Ames Williams\u2019 novel, Leave Her to Heaven<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The original \u201945 film wasn\u2019t as high profile as the aforementioned noirs, but it was memorable for its utterly evil villainess, a dangerously possessive and scheming woman who murders a child, and later devises her own death to implicate her husband and \/ or sister as the chief perpetrators.<\/p>\n

The first big hindrance for the filmmakers of the \u201988 revision was the TV format, because unlike ad-free cable stations such as HBO, on A&E the teleplay would be subject to the standard onslaught of ad breaks, mandating phony cliffhangers every 10-odd minutes.<\/p>\n

The stars and most of the supporting cast were drawn from TV, and novice, one-time screenwriter Timothy Bradshaw more or less doodled dialogue that sounds like minor variations from the \u201845 screenplay – a superior work with snappy repartee and beautiful in-jokes for audiences catching the film for a second time.<\/p>\n

The changes to the basic story are interesting, however, because they compact the drama and spread around character traits to new or different figures.<\/p>\n

Author Richard Harland (Dallas<\/strong>\u2019 Patrick Duffy) is no longer the brother of Danny (Neil Patrick Harris, in his second film role), but his father<\/em>, and the boy was crippled in a car accident that killed Richard\u2019s wife. Vulnerable from the tragedy, he takes Danny to a desert-like resort operated by family friend\/lawyer Glen Robie (L.A. Law<\/strong>\u2019s Larry Drake), where he meets the Berent family.<\/p>\n

In the \u201945 film, Richard spends time at the resort alone with the Berents, but writer Bradshaw added son Danny to replace the scenes at a convalescence resort, bringing all he characters together in the first act.<\/p>\n

The first blunder occurs, though, when Richard says he and Danny are planning to stay for what seems like a week, but the scenes drag on for a much longer period, which either presumes the Richard-Ellen Berent (WKRP in Cincinnati<\/strong>\u2019s Loni Anderson) romance occurs in days, or months; there\u2019s simply no clarification.<\/p>\n

The end results are the same: the couple are slated to be married, they skip a romance, and Ellen becomes annoyed when Danny lives with them at the isolated cabin (no longer branded \u2018Back of the Moon\u2019).<\/p>\n

Ellen\u2019s arrogance and treatment of hired hand\/family friend Leick Thorn has been split into two characters: it\u2019s an amorphous housekeeper \/ family friend that\u2019s treated like a servant (and pusher her to quit after one scene), whereas the hired hand is now a stud named Leif (Daniel Baldwin, in his acting debut) whom she taunts and teases while Richard spends hours a day at the typewriter.<\/p>\n

Danny is dispatched to the Heavens in the same manner, but Richard runs to the lake earlier, seeing Ellen just sitting in the boat, and immediately realizing she let him drown \u2013 a major change from the \u201945 film where Richard remained in doubt of Ellen\u2019s guilt until her cruel admission in the final act.<\/p>\n

The breakdown of Richard\u2019s marriage occurs in near-identical stages, as does Ellen\u2019s loss of the baby, and her self-poisoning, although she uses a massive overdose of sleeping pills instead of arsenic from her father\u2019s shuttered home laboratory. The method of her death is also quite different, because the writer wanted to set up both Richard and Ellen\u2019s sister Ruth (The Boy in the Pastic Bubble<\/strong>\u2019s Glynnis O\u2019Connor) as her killers.<\/p>\n

The sugar for Ellen\u2019s tea is still mixed with a drug, but the sleeping pills come from Ruth, which initially implicate her as the sole killer. During the court trial, it\u2019s already assumed and hashed out by both attorneys that Richard loves Ruth (and visa versa), so the big moment where Ruth admits her love for Richard in the \u201945 film is replaced with Richard confessing he believed Ellen may have killed his son, which translates as withholding evidence, and sentences him to jail for roughly 2 years.<\/p>\n

His conviction wraps up the drama, and the teleplay closes with the same bookend scenes that have Richard taking a motorboat to the cabin, where Ruth awaits him, ready to start a new life, free from Ellen\u2019s evil machinations.<\/p>\n

More scenes are devoted to Ellen discussing with her sister and mother the salvaging of her marriage, but they amount to a few grains of intriguing expansions torpedoed by a fully banal production. The acting is flat because the script offers no challenges: Julie Harris is wasted as Ellen\u2019s moping mother, Duffy has limited range, Anderson frequently punctuates Ellen\u2019s scheming with self-assuring smiles to the camera, and James Sikking\u2019s characterization of jilted fianc\u00e9e \/ prosecuting attorney Russell Quinton lacks any dimensions because the seething jealousy and rage that drove Vincent Price\u2019s portrayal of a vengeful ex-lover has been dialed down in Bradshaw\u2019s script.<\/p>\n

Christian Nyby II\u2019s direction is banal, and the production went cheap by making use of existing custom homes: the resort at the beginning resembles a producer\u2019s suburban mansion and backyard, and the cabin is a custom eighties luxury cottage. The womens\u2019 hairstyles are massive, and the colour scheme is typical of the era: glossy eighties cinematography accentuated by unnatural chroma greens, purples, and blues.<\/p>\n

Lastly, the inventive coarseness of Michael Rubini\u2019s composing heard in films such as The Hunger<\/strong> (1983) is totally lacking here, and his score for Too Good<\/strong> is just loose piano tinkling and ambient chord progressions with synth tones and shimmering sounds \u2013 none of it appropriate for a noir story.<\/p>\n

A&E\u2019s production is a curio for fans of the original film, but the whole endeavor is merely cheap content designed to fill up a two-hour time slot, after which it deserved\u00a0 to vanish into the ether of syndication and late night airings.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2011 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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Related links:<\/em><\/p>\n

DVD \/ Film: \u00a0Leave Her to Heaven <\/a> <\/strong>(1945)<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— \u00a0Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n


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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em><\/em><\/em>\/\u00a0T to U<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ T to U . Film: Weak \/ DVD Transfer: n\/a \/ DVD Extras: n\/a Label: n\/a\/ Region: n\/a \/\u00a0Released: n\/a Genre: TV Movie \/ Film Noir Synopsis: In this remake of Leave Her to Heaven, a woman’s obsessive’s love for a novelist nearly destroys his life (plus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[5,1],"tags":[330,329,331,4212],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-DI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2462"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2533,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462\/revisions\/2533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}