danzeisen Review of The Night the Bridge Fell Down

The Night the Bridge Fell Down (1980 TV Movie)

Yes, this movie is a true disaster alright.

[2/10 · 5 July 2018]

Sometimes when we revisit the past we find ourselves seeing things with a new layer of meaning or understanding. That's really hard to do when there is almost no substance worth revisiting. The Warner brothers print WAS clean and revealed a well preserved movie that looked and sounded great. The special effects were pretty well done, especially for a TV movie. Sadly, that's about all that's worthwhile. This movie may have singlehandedly destroyed the career of Desi Arnez Jr. There is not much on his resume after this movie, and its kind of easy to understand why when you watch how he flails away so ineffectually in this movie. Even his aggression comes across more as spasticity. Just count the number of times he starts to climb down the bridge and then gives up and comes back up. There are also seemingly endless shots of him playing with rope and doing other seemingly pointless actions. It's a relief when his character finally falls to the water. The time frame given this movie should have allowed really good character development and lots of insight into who they are as people. Instead the writers filled the time with a lot of nothing that led us to care about the characters as people. Even te great Leslie Nielsen comes across as one dimensional and so wooden you almost fear splinters. The writing here is the real disaster and the actors and actresses are left to take the blame. There really is NO excuse for such wooden, cheaply formulaic and cliched writing.Irwing Allen, as producer, was also clearly past his prime. The era of the big budget "Disaster film" was over when this movie was made, but maybe it should have ended before this was filmed. The movie is the real disaster.