'Laughlin' can't hit high notes
Chicago Sun-Times, Oct 17, 2007 by Doug Elfman
'VIVA LAUGHLIN' Rating 1
Omigod, omigod, omigod. Melanie Griffith is singing on TV. I just wanted to watch this little CBS show, and all of a sudden she started singing in it -- and not badly -- to Blondie's "One Way or Another."
What the hell is going on here?
"Viva Laughlin" is a bizarre little gamble for TV. It's the semimusical story of a devoted husband-father who builds a casino from scratch in a town outside of Las Vegas called Laughlin.
Every now and then, he and other people (including Griffin, playing a seductress) start breaking out in song and dance. But they're vocalizing over tracks of classic pop songs. In other words, you hear both the actor and the original vocals of a song at the same time.
Odd, yes. Effective? Sort of, kind of, not really, maybe. It's not as heinous as it sounds. I'm confused about where I stand on this.
The songs aren't so bad. What stinks is -- since this is on CBS, the Crimey Bloody Station -- "Viva" comes with a dumb murder mystery, because CBS doesn't think you can care about characters unless some of them kill each other.
Well, maybe that's unfair. "Viva" is a remake of BBC's "Blackpool," which also profited from murder. So CBS is guilty merely of borrowing blood from the Brits.
The hero is Ripley (Lloyd Owen). He finances his casino's construction by selling his very successful chain of convenience stores.
This makes Ripley dumb-ish, I think. In Nevada there are actual hotels called Terrible's and convenience stores called Terrible's. The company smartly never sold those convenient little cash cows.
Anywho, "Viva" begins with Ripley coming up short of moolah after an investor pulls out and winds up dead. Ripley is a prime suspect.
Meanwhile, Ripley has an archenemy named Nicky Fontana (Hugh Jackman), who owns a rival casino. As a villain, Nicky gets all the cool glamor. He sings over the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" while scantily clad cocktailers swirl around him with lustful fingers.
Griffin enters the picture as a lascivious woman who likes Ripley a lot and looks like she's invested a fair amount in plastic surgery.
Despite seeming like a train wreck in the making, "Viva Laughlin" is a well-filmed train wreck in the making. Owen is the only engine firing on all cylinders. He commits to the entire nonsense and sells this thing about as much as he can.
So why exactly are you supposed to tune in every week? For the songs? Yeah, if you enjoy semimusicals. For the murder mystery? No, who cares about another pointless, long-term whodunit on TV at this point?
The bottom line is, there's blood on the tracks of this derailment. Don't care whose blood it is. Can't imagine tuning in again. But before I watched it, I sure did think "Laughlin" might be more laughable than it is.
delfman@suntimes.com
'VIVA LAUGHLIN' Rating 1
Omigod, omigod, omigod. Melanie Griffith is singing on TV. I just wanted to watch this little CBS show, and all of a sudden she started singing in it -- and not badly -- to Blondie's "One Way or Another."
What the hell is going on here?
"Viva Laughlin" is a bizarre little gamble for TV. It's the semimusical story of a devoted husband-father who builds a casino from scratch in a town outside of Las Vegas called Laughlin.
Every now and then, he and other people (including Griffin, playing a seductress) start breaking out in song and dance. But they're vocalizing over tracks of classic pop songs. In other words, you hear both the actor and the original vocals of a song at the same time.
Odd, yes. Effective? Sort of, kind of, not really, maybe. It's not as heinous as it sounds. I'm confused about where I stand on this.
The songs aren't so bad. What stinks is -- since this is on CBS, the Crimey Bloody Station -- "Viva" comes with a dumb murder mystery, because CBS doesn't think you can care about characters unless some of them kill each other.
Well, maybe that's unfair. "Viva" is a remake of BBC's "Blackpool," which also profited from murder. So CBS is guilty merely of borrowing blood from the Brits.
The hero is Ripley (Lloyd Owen). He finances his casino's construction by selling his very successful chain of convenience stores.
This makes Ripley dumb-ish, I think. In Nevada there are actual hotels called Terrible's and convenience stores called Terrible's. The company smartly never sold those convenient little cash cows.
Anywho, "Viva" begins with Ripley coming up short of moolah after an investor pulls out and winds up dead. Ripley is a prime suspect.
Meanwhile, Ripley has an archenemy named Nicky Fontana (Hugh Jackman), who owns a rival casino. As a villain, Nicky gets all the cool glamor. He sings over the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" while scantily clad cocktailers swirl around him with lustful fingers.
Griffin enters the picture as a lascivious woman who likes Ripley a lot and looks like she's invested a fair amount in plastic surgery.
Despite seeming like a train wreck in the making, "Viva Laughlin" is a well-filmed train wreck in the making. Owen is the only engine firing on all cylinders. He commits to the entire nonsense and sells this thing about as much as he can.
So why exactly are you supposed to tune in every week? For the songs? Yeah, if you enjoy semimusicals. For the murder mystery? No, who cares about another pointless, long-term whodunit on TV at this point?
The bottom line is, there's blood on the tracks of this derailment. Don't care whose blood it is. Can't imagine tuning in again. But before I watched it, I sure did think "Laughlin" might be more laughable than it is.
delfman@suntimes.com
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