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With The A-Team finally navigating the production gauntlet from hit TV show to feature film, it got us thinking about the best and worst movies that have gone from the small screen to the big one. The fact is that a large majority of them fail to replicate what you enjoyed week after week on TV in one film, but there have been a few that broke the rules that remakes and adaptations are never a good idea. The best films based on TV shows use the source as a foundation, a starting point from which they become their own entity, enjoyable to both fans of the original and those who have never seen it. Here are the best….
The Rules: Only the first film in a franchise was eligible in that films like Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan are based on the first movie as much as the show. This disqualified J.J. Abrams’ reboot as well (although it would have placed very high were it eligible). And films based on shows that were themselves adaptations – Popeye, Batman, etc. – didn’t qualify as they were based on another source as much and often more than the show.
Runner-ups: Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, The Brady Bunch Movie, Charlie's Angels, Dragnet, George of the Jungle, Jackass: The Movie, Miami Vice, The Twilight Zone: The Movie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and The X-Files.
The Simpsons Movie came long after the peak of arguably the best program in the history of television and general disdain for the decline of the FOX series led too many people to dismiss the movie that it spawned. The fact is that the first ten minutes of The Simpsons Movie are as funny as any comedy of the last several years. It sags a bit towards the end and there was certainly a time when most Simpsons fans thought that the eventual movie would top this list, but The Simpsons Movie is smart, clever, and very, very funny. Let’s not ignore what we got just because we wanted it fifteen years earlier.
Far from the best film in the franchise, the first Star Trek film may be a little creatively limp to modern eyes but it’s still accomplished enough to deserve a spot on this list because it reinvigorated a dead franchise for decades to come. We may have excluded sequels and reboots, but it’s impossible to ignore the ripple effect caused by this adaptation, one that spawned a dozen films, helped usher in new versions of the show, and influenced countless science fiction works of all mediums. When it first aired, no one would have guessed that the TV program was just the start of a worldwide phenomenon and that this movie was the bridge to the next era of the Enterprise.
There are probably hundreds of people who have seen The Naked Gun on cable or DVD and have no idea that it’s even based on a TV show. Get thee to a Netflix queue and take a look at the brilliant Police Squad!, a hilarious spoof of bad cop shows that aired in March of 1982. Yes, just March. ABC cancelled Police Squad! after only four episodes had aired (and then aired the final two produced that summer). It was way ahead of its time as proven by the massive success of the film based on it just six years later. What so many of its imitators never learned was that making comedy this “stupid” takes some pretty smart writing. When The Naked Gun pops up on cable again, don’t just flip by. You’ll be amazed at how well it has stood the test of time.
Director Brian De Palma, who is clearly the master of TV show adaptations with two in the top seven, perfectly balanced what worked about the original program while also recognizing the importance of making the film relevant to a generation who had never heard of Peter Graves. Hardcore loyalists to the original series seemed a bit turned off by recasting it with the man who was arguably the biggest movie star in the world at the time but criticisms of M:I for not being loyal enough to the series are misguided. The fact is that in nearly anyone else’s hands, Mission would have turned into cheesy, period comedy, a near-spoof of its source (see The Mod Squad for how it could have turned out). In De Palma’s, it turned into a spectacular action film and a great ode to the show that inspired it.
After a few forays into filmmaking that were less-than-successful (BASEketball anyone?), we all had our doubts that Trey Parker & Matt Stone could maintain a story for a film’s running time. Most films based on sitcoms fall apart because it’s incredibly difficult to stretch something that works for 22 minutes with commercials into something often more than four times as long (see Leave it to Beaver or The Addams Family). But the extra time allowed Parker and Stone to not just stretch an episode plot but develop something completely unique, skewering subjects as diverse as Saddam Hussein and Disney musicals. The movie worked so well that it reinvigorated the show for the next decade. As hysterically funny as anything released that year, the only thing that baffles us about the South Park movie is why the hell it’s been eleven years and there still hasn’t been another one.
It’s not a straight adaptation of a TV show, but considering that Borat wouldn’t exist without HBO’s Da Ali G Show, it qualifies, and undeniably deserves a spot high in the top ten. The film has spawned a number of horrendous imitators, but it’s still worth it just for the brilliance of Sacha Baron Cohen’s performance in Borat. Completely fearless and committed to his character, Cohen is perfect as Borat and his improvisational satire of American’s stupid behavior when it comes to foreigners will completely stand the test of time. It would be as funny as it was a few years ago if it were released today and that will likely be true in ten or even twenty years time. Great comedies are funny decades after they were released and Borat will be making people laugh for generations.
We’ll never understand how Mal and the rest of the crew of the Serenity found a way to strike creative gold both on television and in film and yet most of America barely noticed. Only 11 episodes of Joss Whedon’s Firefly aired to low ratings before it was cancelled and one of the best science fiction films of the 2000s only made $26 million domestically. Now considered a cult hit, Serenity will continue to find an audience as the years go on and people will wonder why the show and film weren’t hits when they first came out. With excellent performances and a spectacular script, Serenity gets better every time you watch it. Like a lot of now-beloved sci-fi, both Firefly and Serenity were ahead of their time.
Brian De Palma takes his TV adaptations seriously. Adapting beloved dramatic programs almost always leads to cinematic disaster because filmmakers rarely take their subject matter seriously enough, producing tongue-in-cheek BS instead of honest entertainment. The Untouchables works because everyone, including Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro, and Oscar winner Sean Connery, were one hundred percent committed to making a serious, dramatic film, not just a “TV movie.” The performances are great but it’s often ignored that The Untouchables is a technical masterpiece from the staging of the Battleship Potemkin ode on the staircase to Ennio Morricone’s beautiful score to the legendary baseball bat scene; it’s one of De Palma’s most accomplished works as a director. Like the best films on this list, it stands alone as a great drama or works as a modern version of the show for its fans. De Palma has made a career working his own inspirations, often Alfred Hitchcock, into modern films, so perhaps it makes sense that he’s also arguably the master of taking TV shows that inspired many and making them into hit films.
You have to be kind of an a-hole to not like The Muppet Movie. It’s timeless. Have you seen it lately? It’s absolutely, one hundred percent as enjoyable as it ever was, looking nowhere near the thirty-plus years it’s been sitting on the shelf. One of the few films on this list to be released while the show was still on the air, The Muppet Movie is one of those very few works made for children that can be equally enjoyed by adults. The Muppets are on the edge of a comeback with a highly touted Jason Segel Muppet movie coming out next year, but it’s doubtful that any work will ever top the first beautiful adventure of Kermit, Fozzie, Gonzo, Ms. Piggy, and the rest of the gang.
The only film on this list to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar (along with six additional nominations), The Fugitive is the template that should be used whenever a producer attempts to take a beloved classic program and bring it to the big screen. The film version of The Fugitive serves as a modern companion piece to the series by using many of the same plot points and themes but also by giving viewers something that stands completely on its own. So many TV adaptations don’t work if you’ve never seen the source material but The Fugitive is a great action film regardless of your familiarity with the saga of Dr. Richard Kimble.
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