Director - Bill Persky, Sitcom Hack: That Girl, Alice, Welcome Back, Kotter, Kate & Allie, Who’s The Boss?

Destroyers of Source Book – Rich Eustis & Michael Elias, who really should have known better.

 Cast:

Martin Mull (lots of stuff) - Harvey Holroyd 

Tuesday Weld (ditto) - Katie Holroyd 

Jennifer McAllister (CHiPS) - Joanie Holroyd 

Sam Chew Jr. (The Bastard…no, that’s the name of the movie) - Bill 

Sally Kellerman (Original Hot Lips) - Martha 

Anthony Battaglia (Airport) - Stokely 

Bill Macy (whose real first name is Wolf. Why would you want to change that?)  - Sam Stone 

Nita Talbot (Amityville 1992 – oy vey!)- Angela 

Pamela Bellwood (the slut on Dynasty) - Carol 

Barbara Rhoades (Soap) - Vivian 

Ann Weldon (Shampoo. Hey, a good movie!) - Rachel 

Peter Bonerz (what a last name, huh?) - Leonard  

Christopher Lee (don’t even get me started) - Luckman Skull 

Serial the movie, is based on Serial the book, a witty, 52-chapter stab at the Sucky Seventies. The novel covers a year in the lives of Kate and Harvey Holroyd, a hip couple who live in Marin County, trying to live out the white person’s version of the American Dream.  There’s plenty of adultery, natural foods, earth tones, yoga, fern bars, permissive child-rearing, hot tubs, dope dealers, macramé, and references to granola. It’s a quick read that manages to cram in just about every single ridiculous 70s fad, or at least those practiced by upper middle class Caucasians. 

Serial the movie sets about trashing its source material from the very beginning. Points covered in two sentences in the book are stretched out to major plot points. Whole story lines are deleted, unnecessary ones added, and what remains is utterly stripped of any ability to sting. Hollywood turned Serial from satire to sitcom.  Directed by – surprise! – veteran sitcom director Bill Persky and starring a passel of former and future TV actors (Martin Mull, Tuesday Weld, Bill Macy, Clark Brandon, Jennifer McAllister, Nita Talbot, Pamela Bellwood, Barbara Rhoades, Tom Smothers, and last but not least, Peter Bonerz), I hardly think this result was unintentional.  Perhaps the most offensive change is the stupid, sappy killing off of a supporting character for no reason but to generate a cheap, TV-style bathos. 

On the bright side, for me anyway, is the way a minor episode in the book has been expanded into a major minor plotline – teenage daughter Joanie joining a Moonie-esque cult. They are Moonies in the novel, but the movie fictionalizes them into a generic group of purple-robe-wearing, grinning fascists.  They seem to have no particular philosophy or anything to offer, but a couple of iterations of  “We love you, Joanie” is all it takes to induce her to join.  Joanie rapidly tires of flower-selling, however, and wants to leave.  Like all movie cults, the members act entirely against reason and refuse to let an unhappy and disruptive person go, leading Harvey to resort to breaking Joanie out of their clutches with the help of a group of gay bikers, led by – wait for it – Christopher Lee.

 Serial’s handling of the cult is superficial and obvious, like everything else in the movie. First they’re nice to Joanie, then they’re mean. We’re told they are Evil essentially because they are too polite and all dress alike. You never have any idea what they’re trying to accomplish. Tellingly, the cult members do not even have names; even in the credits, they’re simply designated by number.  It’s as if the screenplay was written by someone with the reasoning powers of a six-year-old - they’re bad because I said so.  In fact, Joanie’s cult bears a more-than-passing resemblance to the Sunnies, the cult Billy Tate joins on the (you guessed it) TV sitcom, Soap.  Except the Sunnies had more character. Funnier, too. 

If you expect nothing and haven’t read the book, Serial can be enjoyed on a purely processed-cheese level. Probably the best scene is the outdoor wedding that kicks off the film, performed by Tommy Smothers in his best Timothy Leary acid-guru robe. The happy couple has written their own wedding vows for the occasion. After Sally Kellerman intones “You-ness, me-ness, us-ness, we-ness”, uptight Harvey adds “Sickness”.  The groom’s vows, in the finest EST tradition, include the words “…because I am an asshole”. 

What could have been a stupendous satire of the self-absorbed Me Generation ends instead with the most sitcom-ish of crappy happy endings. The whole family, wearing mindless smiles not unlike those of the Evil Cult members, leave it all behind to Start Anew.  Serial is good for a giggle (and that song has a way of sticking in your head for a looong time), but for even a glimpse of the true polyester hell that was the 70s, watch The Ice Storm.