Air America – The Complete Series

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Episodes: C

 

 

One of the strangest films Mel Gibson or Robert Downey Jr. ever did was Roger Spottiswoode’s 1990 would-be action/comedy Air America, about a secret government air service operating for the C.I.A. during Vietnam.  The film conveniently sidesteps the Vietnam conflict, is generally idiotic, did not do that well and is so sloppy that it uses songs by the band America on its soundtrack (to match the film’s title) that had not even been recorded yet!  Well, not-so-hot films like Buffy The Vampire Slayer became a huge hit TV show, so why not Air America?  This time, the series is set in the modern day and Lorenzo Lamas is the co-pilot and show’s only star.

 

Remarkably lasting 26 shows (the last four were never broadcast), the only thing the show has to do with the former film but its title, as it becomes another excuse to hope Lamas could have another hit series.  Instead, it very understandably becomes another bomb where all he can do is shoot guns, say bad one-liners and drop bombs.  The cast is dressed generically, with tired generic weapons, even more generic scripts and it all goes by as one reactionary blur.  Unless you are really curious, enjoy a weapons precession or are some diehard Lamas fan, skip it.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image is a little softer than it should be, in part because all the effects were being done with digitized analog NTSC video, including the computer graphics.  This show is towards the end of a long cycle of such TV production and such effects exist no other way.  The show is not prominent enough to go back and update this aspect like a Star Trek spin-off series and fans would likely prefer it stay as such.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is simple at best, with no surrounds and limited fidelity, but adequate for the dialogue and occasional explosions present.  There are no extras.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo