The Langoliers (1995) review

20. The Langoliers (1995)

Directed by: Tom Holland

Produced by: David R. Kappes

Screenplay by: Tom Holland

Starring: Patricia Wettig, Dean Stockwell, David Morse, Mark Lindsay Chapman, Frankie Faison, Baxton Harris, Kimber Riddle, Christopher Collet, Kate Maberly, Bronson Pinchot

Time for another Stephen King adaptation. I’ve reviewed a lot of them over the years; some are really good, some a little less so, but this one really stands out, if just for the especially hokey acting and totally off-the-rails ending. Based on the novella from his four-part anthology book “Four Past Midnight,” “The Langoliers” aired in May 1995 as a two-part miniseries on ABC, the network that had previously shown “It,” “The Stand” and “The Tommyknockers.” It’s about a group of airplane passengers who fall asleep aboard a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Boston, only to wake up and discover that everyone else on the plane has disappeared, as well as all signs of life on the ground below. Though featuring a foreboding concept with decent build-up, the overwritten dialogue, awkward performances, and ludicrous special effects make it a bloated, unintentionally funny mess.

When airline pilot Brian (David Morse) learns of his ex-wife’s untimely death, he’s allowed to pass on his scheduled flight and take a ride on a separate one to Boston. But before the packed plane gets as far as Denver, he awakens to a nearly empty cabin with the plane still in the air; even the pilots are gone. The only remaining passengers include mystery writer Bob (Dean Stockwell), British secret agent Nick (Mark Lindsay Chapman), schoolteacher Laurel (Patricia Wettig), young blind girl Dinah (Kate Maberly), and irritable broker Craig Toomy (Bronson Pinchot). Brian gets on the radio to call for help, but there’s no response; they eventually land at Bangor International Airport in Maine, but nobody’s there either. Even stranger, the whole scenery is lifeless; matches won’t light, sounds don’t echo, and the food and drink have no taste. What is happening, and what does it have to do with Toomy’s lifelong fixation on creatures called the Langoliers?

Like most King stories, the basic plotline is solid; there’s something unnaturally eerie about this idea, a world where everyone’s somehow vanished into thin air. It’s like something out of an old episode of “The Twilight Zone,” and that show had its share of strange air occurrences. But I think that’s one of the problems here; I don’t know how long the novella is, but this isn’t presented as a conflict that needs a three-hour run time. The concept isn’t bad, but once you go through the process of imagining why this happened and get into the actual why, not much really occurs except a lot of talking. Most of the action is dedicated to long-winded, repetitive, pretentious dialogue; characters spend five minutes explaining what only needs about ten seconds. At least with something like “It,” there’s plenty of delving into characters’ psychology and good moments of chemistry.

Most of the acting is melodramatic and stilted; David Morse has a calming steadiness as Brian, and Frankie Faison is dependably solid as military worker Don, but so many line reads from the supporting characters are just goofy, like Kate Maberly as Dinah, Christopher Collet as a music student named Albert, and Baxter Harris as businessman Rudy, who I swear does nothing but talk about food. Here’s a fun personal fact; Bethany—a teenager with drug problems—is played by Kimber Riddle, one of my acting professors at Ramapo College of New Jersey. By far the most entertaining performance is Bronson Pinchot as Toomy; he chews the scenery like nobody’s business, sporting a myriad of insane facial expressions and going shamelessly shouty in his insistence that he get to Boston for an “IMPORTANT BUSINESS MEETING at 9:00!” Toomy’s shown as a tragic character with an abusive past, but I can’t take it seriously with how much Pinchot overacts it, yet his every action is a breath of fresh air in this sea of relentless tedium. Also, what’s his deal with tearing up paper whenever he gets the chance?

But although the mystery might initially hook you in, not only are there agonizingly long gaps where we’re just waiting around, but the interactions range from silly to incredibly protracted. There’s seldom the indication that these characters are scared and more like they just want to sound smart or waste time, and the longer we spend on the plane and in the airport, the less haunting it becomes. We spend almost an hour hearing these chomping noises approaching them, just the same sound effects over and over, and when it’s eventually revealed what the source is, you might crack up. I’m going to get into spoilers here, but trust me, this is worth talking about. Without revealing why they’re in this situation, we eventually see the Langoliers, these big, dark, malted-milk ball-looking abominations that gobble up everything in sight with their many teeth. And it is the most hilarious, poorly-rendered CGI garbage you can imagine; supposedly, they were going to be portrayed by puppets, but the pure insanity of how awful these computerized things look makes this whole shitshow worth a watch.

Again, I haven’t read the novella, so I don’t know how this story looks on paper, but just judging by this miniseries, “The Langoliers” doesn’t strike me as something that needed this much screen attention. You can cut out probably half the characters and much of the dialogue, and this might work as a decent mystery thriller about a plane going missing, although it would still be hampered by the sheer visual and logical weirdness of the third act, plus a mystifyingly cheesy final image. It still performed well in TV ratings and even received an Emmy nomination for Sound Mixing; really, for those droning, chewing noises? Okay, there’s at least a little suspense in this, and I like seeing some of these collaborations, but not much else works except for the sake of irony.

My rating: 5/10