The Andromeda Strain: Night One

Posted by Robert Fure (robert@filmschoolrejects.com) on May 27, 2008

The infection is spreading. In this case, the infection of poorly adapted properties is spreading to A&E! I’d say to TV, but we all know poor adaptations have infested TV for years. The newest lamb for the slaughter is Michael Crichton’s masterpiece The Andromeda Strain. The original plot follows a group of the words top scientists as they race to find a way to stop a mysterious spaceborn disease that has killed all but two citizens of an American town.

This updated version follows the same basic premise, with a lot of changes, pretty much all of them for the worse, in my opinion. We’ve previously covered a lot of the basics here, so if you need a more in-depth catch up, check it out. This will be reserved mostly for a breakdown and my reactions.

The original story has bloated to include a government conspiracy, a drug addicted reporter, a Bill Clinton-inspired President, and, perhaps worst of all, an alien invasion! I wish I were kidding, but I’m not. I also forgot to mention there are some throw away lines aimed at the current administration (Republicans are so evil!), global warming, Enron, and all that standard conspiracy nut fun stuff.

Pretty quickly the town of Piedmont, Utah, is infected by stupid kids and a stupid fire chief, who figure its a good idea to crack open a satellite they found. Soon, a pair of Army investigators are killed and before even the President has been briefed, this secret video has somehow been leaked to a reporter in rehab (Eric McCormack). Our investigative team, lead by Benjamin Bratt, is soon busy, actually rather casually, investigating the infection and the two survivors they managed to find. Soon, the agent presumably mutates to eat rubber and causes an aircraft to crash. Our scientists have discovered that the sticky rubber substance inside the closed satellite (how it got into a closed satellite, which then landed completely closed, knocked out of orbit by the substance we’ll never know) is actually a high tech polymer that contained the Andromeda Strain within it - a biological bomb from aliens!

Special effects wise, most of them are pretty weak. Sometimes the F-16s flying by look ok, but there are a lot of poor CGI shots (thats the real infection) of different screens, animals, birds, and the town itself. The acting doesn’t seem to fair much better. Daniel Dae Kim is phoning it in and Christa Miller’s Dr. Noyce is pretty much the flattest scientist I’ve ever seen - and that’s saying something, considering scientists are flat characters. Benjamin Bratt does fine, but his character is one of the worse people ever. He’s been entrusted with a nuclear device, he designed one of the most secure and important buildings in America, yet he subverts his superiors and leaks sensitive information after about 10 seconds. Real professional, if you know what I’m saying.

To spice it up, there is a sequence of the scientists decontaminating which was apparently outsourced to MTV, as it all of a sudden goes distractingly slow-motion and the characters rotate through the process. This part is also incredibly boring and weird, despite the fact that in the book, and the original film, its awesome. This isn’t covered in the new miniseries (though its sort of shown) in both of the other incarnations, the scientists have their epidermis burned off to get rid of bacteria. Their outermost layer of skin burned to ash. Thats awesome, but glossed over here.

Still on the negative side, a wormhole opened and that’s how the strain got through. Again, aliens. What is it with aliens this Memorial Day? This was areal WTF moment that has nothing to do with the book. One more instance of a WTF moment that had me laughing out loud. At one point the strain spreads quickly through the chain of life. A dog survives the initial infection for some reason, but then gets sick and dies and is picked at by a vulture. Somehow, a nearby rabbit is infected during this. The rabbit is then killed by a rattlesnake who dies of the infection (cross-species contamination!). Then a rat starts nibbling on the snake. It is immediately attacked by an eagle who then drops the rat on a military outpost. They then all become infected. That whole span takes about 10 minutes in film time and 2 minutes in real time. Laughable, really.

So what’s good? Um. To be honest, not that much. The story is mildly engaging. I’m going to watch the last two-hours if I can, as I want to see how they wrap up this ridiculousness. If you missed the first night, don’t bother coming to night two. If you’re thinking about catching this, wait for the full review. If a miracle happens, maybe something redeeming will come. I doubt it though. But if you like train wrecks, you can tune in.

Perhaps I’m being overly harsh. I’m a huge fan of the book and a pretty big fan of the original movie. So it hurts. All in all this is probably just below average for a made for TV movie, so hey, jump in if you want. If you’re a fan, you’ll not find much here to embrace.

The Upside: I like the Andromeda Strain.

The Downside: This is not very much like the Andromeda Strain.

On the Side: All of the characters were updated from white heterosexuals to include a variety of races (White, Asian, Black) and one of the characters is alluded to being homosexual. Writer Robert Schenkkan made the changes to update the world “as it is.”

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