Headbanger Movie Review
By Mad Professor Mike
Bionic Ever After? (Made for TV)USA/Canada - 1994Hello, America!! This Is Mad Prof. Mike with the Headbanger Made-for-TV Movie Review!! To me, there is no more quintessential representation of the all around 1970s GUY!! than Colonel Steve Austin: The Six Million Dollar Man. Think back to the early 1970s... when America still had heroes, of a sort. Steve Austin was an ex-astronaut, an all-around jock kind of GUY!! who looked really cool in blue polyester leisure suits with obscenely wide collars. In the world of Post-Watergate upheaval, he was a GOOD GUY who worked for the Government. Steve's alter ego, Lee Majors, was married to the pinnacle of 1970s lip-glossed, feathered-hair beauty: Farrah Fawcett!!! Surely in the days before the dark advent of Disco, Steve Austin was America's ultimate Alpha-Male. And who can forget Jamie Sommers, Steve's girlfriend? As the Bionic Woman, she was the ultimate 1970s liberated kind of GAL!!. She was an ex-tennis pro... all 1970s self-actualized women played tennis, remember? She taught grade school and really cared about the kids. Her cool California ranch house looked like a giant furnished hot tub. And Gosh! Her hair always looked great! Well imagine my delight when, after this year's showing of that most Satanic of children's specials, "RUDOLPH THE RED NOSED REINDEER," CBS broadcast the tele-film "BIONIC EVER AFTER?", the story in which Steve and Jamie finally tie the knot... AFTER 20 YEARS!!! My God. It was beautiful!! Steve and Jamie's bionics are being sabotaged, just as a cheesy, "DIE HARD"-esque siege of the American embassy in the Bahamas takes place, led by a Generic Bad Guy with a Generic European Bad Guy accent. But the plot's not important! What's important are the little things, like the slow-motion bionic racquetball match between our two heroes. Things like Richard Anderson, playing the redoubtable Oscar Goldman, earnestly telling Steve as his bride-to-be lies on a hospital bed: "Steve, Jamie may... NEVER BE BIONIC AGAIN!!!" And folks... Let me tell ya... you haven't lived until you've seen the 90s incarnation of Lee Majors doing the bionic sprint in slow-motion with his paunch moving like a seismic upheaval under his shirt. Sure "BIONIC EVER AFTER?" didn't have Max, the Bionic Dog. There was no Sasquatch, no Fem-Bots. No special guest appearance by Evel Knievel. It being the politically correct 90s, at no point did Oscar call Jamie, "Babe." But I loved "BIONIC EVER AFTER?" It was like talking to old friends. Kind of silly old friends, yeah. But you get the idea. "BIONIC EVER AFTER?" gets four Guilty Pleasure headbangs. With the Headbanger Made-for-TV Movie Review, I'm Mad Prof. Mike for "Movie Magazine." © 1994 - Michael Marano - Air Date: 11/30/94 |
