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80Each part has edge-of-the-seat moments, thanks to some admirable performances as well as several intriguing new plot twists that inject surprise at key moments.
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70This mini-series actually improves on the original 1969 Michael Crichton sci-fi non-thriller, which spent too much time in a fab lab in the desert and not enough inside the icky green virus—or outside, where the government was covering up its biological-warfare experiments.
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70This version of “The Andromeda Strain” is paced well; it gives Crichton’s story a hint of blandness but it also marches through the plot with no-nonsense efficiency.
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70This slick and often scary update presents a gripping medical mystery of scientific trial and error against a topical backdrop of bioterrorism, environmental activism and 24-style government conspiracy.
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50For about three hours and 40 minutes, the mini-series rockets along, an exciting pile of preposterousness with conspiratorial overtones. Then it fizzles, with stuff you've seen 1,000 times before, and irritating loose ends.
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50This version of his story arrives in a world that has seen not only "Lost," but "The X-Files," "Armageddon," and every other sci-fi show or movie that melds disaster, conspiracy, and teamwork. By now, it takes a lot more than clever ideas to keep us hooked.
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50Unfortunately, the new plots continually intrude, dissipating tension and making an already complicated story too convoluted to follow.
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42Andromeda is a two-night extravaganza that could have been one if its characters didn't speak in massive, clunky chunks of technojargon. [30 May 2008, p.80]
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40As an A&E miniseries, the Michael Crichton novel unfolds as a fast-moving thriller with many jolting sequences. Unfortunately, the mini's makers fumble the most crucial action sequence. They're all thumbs, and the results are stupendously silly.
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40Where the movie was content to focus on that process, director Mikael Salomon and writer-playwright Robert Schenkkan throw in a veritable kitchen sink of elements. [...] Too bad, because the project has assembled a solid cast, even if they're constrained by spouting all that scientific jargon and spend too much time squabbling and grappling with outside distractions.
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30A hacky remake of a mediocre 1971 film of a pulp-science 1969 novel, this miniseries (it concludes Tuesday, if you must waste two nights of your life) is a poster child for generational decline: Whatever few IQ points were present in the original have long since leached away.
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30It never grows quite suspenseful enough, and it rests on the rather un-sci-fi-ish idea that the future is a benign force, like a mentor uncle with something meaningful to teach us about our venality and callous disregard for the Earth.
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30A&E's The Andromeda Strain is just a very expensive, very cheesy retread.
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As each new element is added, explored and explained, the tension evident in the original novel gets watered down as we digest these other distractions. The result is completely devoid of any suspense.
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25Return you must. Otherwise, you'll miss the full-on descent into pants-wetting, outrageous, sci-fi crackery that makes the final two hours fly by.
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10So here it is, a two-part A&E miniseries that manages, despite a cast culled from some of the best shows on TV, to be both overwrought and dull, a veritable Frankenfilm of sci-fi thrillers, built of debris from sources including "Outbreak," "Sphere," "The Omega Man," "The Birds," "The China Syndrome" and, oh, yes, "The Andromeda Strain."
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10Woo, dog, is this miniseries bad--quite possibly worse than "Tin Man."
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10If it's relevant and reflects the hip themes of today, perhaps nobody will notice wooden acting, ludicrous dialogue and a plot so convoluted that the whole enterprise has as much tension as a broken violin string.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 12 out of 24
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Mixed: 3 out of 24
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Negative: 9 out of 24
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JerryG8
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epic
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10epic