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7 out of 9 people found the following review useful: Disturbing, 27 September 2006 Author: cqwerv from my house
Sure, it's a made for TV movie starring icons of 70s sitcoms, but now that it's 11 years later, "The Colony" is a disturbing metaphor for what the USA is rapidly becoming.According to stories I've recently read in Consumer Reports, there are now chips in many products that can track the location of the product even after it has left the store. They merchants and government claim this is to make inventory control easier. But why does inventory control need to know that I have a can of shaving cream in my bathroom that was purchased on a certain date at a certain store?There's now talk of all cars manufactured for sale in the US having government required black boxes, like those on airplanes, by 2008. They say they are to aid in things like auto accident investigations. But they will also monitor where you're driving and at what speed you're traveling. They will also inform law enforcement when your car is exceeding the speed limit so you can be mailed a ticket.But hey, why worry?The innocent have nothing to fear . . .
5 out of 6 people found the following review useful: Excellent production, 8 June 2005 Author: Fred from Philadelpia
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
I stumbled upon this movie on Lifetime channel while I was channel surfing. Why oh why had I never heard of this movie before? It was fantastic!!John Ritter did a wonderful job as Mr. Benson, and Hal Linden did a magnificent job as the head of the colony.The deeper meaning of this movie is that Big Brother is watching you. The scene in which the control booth can use cameras to look in individual bedrooms may not be far from reality.Scary, eh? Reminds me of the Rockwell/Jackson song: I always feel like, somebody's watching me.
4 out of 6 people found the following review useful: The Colony Is Fun To Watch, 18 November 2004 Author: dreamt_learnt (dreamt_learnt@msn.com) from Iowa
The Colony is a fun movie to watch. This is a movie that is great for whole families to watch.I think that teenagers would get a kick out of this movie.Hal Linden who played the owner of The Colony was very effective.I remember when he played the character of the cop in the 1970s made for television series Barney Miller.This is a very different character for him to play.June Lockhart as the head of the school in The Colony was sinister to say the least.I was thinking that I wouldn't want to have her for the head of any school that I went to.Remember June Lockhart in the television series in the 1960s called LostIn Space? She was a sweet mother in that role.John Ritter was very good as the concerned dad and husband.John Ritter was such a good actor.I really liked the character of the head of security at The Colony.That man was scary!This is one of television's fun movies.
1 out of 1 people found the following review useful: The Ficus Benjamina is especially nice. Made from the finest silkscreen polyester., 3 February 2008 Author: sol from Brooklyn NY USA
(There are Spoilers) "The Colony" is a place where everything is wonderful with crime non-existent and the education system at the top 2% in the nation. Life is as good as it can get for the big bucks that people spend, after being accepted by the Colony's board of directors, to be living there.It's after electronic security expert Nick Knowlton, John Ritter, and his wife Leslie, Mary Page Keller, were carjacked and almost killed by a pair of masked muggers that they were given the opportunity by the Colony's founder multi-billionaire Philip Denig, Hal Lindin, to live there. Earlier in the film Nick was contracted by Denig to install the Colony's new security system and the fact that he was so good at it Denig wanted him, and his family, to become a member of his exclusive condominium.We already know that things at the Colony aren't exactly kosher with the Bensons, Vince Deadrick Jr & Stacy Courtney, being knocked out and juiced up, by having a bottle of bourbon shoved down Bob Benson's throat, by the Colony's top security man Doug Corwin, Marshall R. Teague. Putting the car that the Bob was driving into drive Corwin has it, with the Benson's unconscious in it, drive down a cliff were they were burned to a crisp. Benson had this DVD disk made that would expose everything that was really going on in the Colony and Denig wanted it bad. It turned out that the super careful Corwin screwed up by having Benson give him a fake disk and on top of all that having him juice Benson up with bourbon instead of the booze that he elusively drank gin!Later Nick realizes that his stay at the Colony is like a stay at a maximum security prison with him forced to follow insane rules and regulations for everything he does. It's then that Nick and his wife Leslie together with his two children Danielle & Andy, Alexandera Pictto & Cody Dorkin, try to make a run for it to freedom. The people living in the Colony are so brainwashed in how important they are that they don't realize that their being turned into a bunch of mindless zombies by Denig and his gang. Denig were told, by himself no less, has been obsessed with security matters since he was a little boy when his parents were victims of urban crime. It now comes out, through the revelation of the missing Benson disk, that Denig is not only a security freak but also in violation of a number of US privacy laws! Denig is gathering up, with his video security system, sensitive and very private information on all the people in the Colony and possibly, in order to keep them in line, blackmailing them with it!In the end It's not Nick who gets the goods on Denig and his head goon security chief Corwin but his daughter Danelle. It was Danelle who found Benson's missing disk hidden in the basement of her parents home and broke it's security code thus being able to decipher it's contents. It turned out that the Benson's lived in the same place that Nick and his family are now staying at in the Colony!A bit too paranoid to be believable "The Colony" has the very careful Denig blow his entire operation by murdering, through his henchman Corwin, those who like the Bensons were about to expose him. Whatever Denig got out of peeping into other peoples bedrooms in blackmailing them to stay at his place was nothing compared to what he'd get in having them murdered! The unbelievably ridicules regulations that Denig installed at his private condominium were only getting the people who lived there sick tired as well as rebellious. These draconian and mindless regulations, that filled what looked like an entire phone book, had the people in the Colony more then willing to both leave the place altogether and expose Denigs sleazy racket to he police.In the end it was Denigs control freak-like methods that turned a peaceful and crime free environment like the Colony into a Nazi concentration camp or Soviet gulag. Denig's actions also forced the people there, like the Knowltons, to take matters into their own hands that lead to his downfall.P.S It also turned out to both Denig's and Corwin's shock and surprise that Nick's brother Mike, Tod Jeffries,was the head detective in the local towns police department! Being put on the case to investigate the Benson's "accidenal" deaths gave Mike the opening that he needed to both expose and end Denig's crazy and deadly antics at his private "Colony".
Three's Company meets Barney Miller meets WKRP in Cincinnati, 24 October 2009 Author: G Dog from United States
Three's Company meets Barney Miller meets WKRP in Cincinnati. Hey it's a 70's sit com re-union! Jack Tripper, Barney Miller and Herb Tarlick meet in the creepy Stepford like Southern California community of "The Colony". This was a great movie. Anything with Jon Ritter is totally worth watching. He is such a warm and heartfelt actor. Since his passing, it is comforting to be able to watch him again and feel closer to the good old days of one of the greatest shows of all time, Three's Company. Hey, it's not a big budget Hollywood Blockbuster, but you already knew that. So get the popcorn ready and sit back and enjoy a thoroughly entertaining movie.
6 out of 13 people found the following review useful: Eden as Seen by Dick Cheney, 8 June 2005 Author: lord woodburry (deanofrpps@aol.com) from The Society NY
Welcome to the Colony. It's very sleek, effete, modern and totally upper middle classish. Externally it's a well constructed paradise replete with its own efficient private security enforcing the C&R, the fine print covenant and restrictions which govern life, but what lies behind the pleasantries and the security screens?Colony featured excellent performances by Hal Linden as the evil genius who created the colony and John Ritter the neophyte who allowed to enter the circuit walls engirding the Colony is drawn into discovery of the hidden secret.I never liked John Ritter's personal philosophy of endemic liberalism but it is strange to watch this 1980s made for TV movie and witness its eerie prophesy for life in a nearly paranoid state.
2 out of 6 people found the following review useful: Not bad for a snowy Sat. afternoon., 17 June 2006 Author: Slyjack2003 from United States
I thumbed through the channels and came up with " The Colony " After watching for awhile and thinking it might turn out to be a good wet Saturday movie, I realized it was just like living in a gated community here in Boynton Beach, Florida. Fortunatly we can leave whenever we wish. However, there are associations who tell you what color your homes should be painted, what kinds of plants are acceptable, who is entitled to play on the tennis courts,who can swim in the pool etc,etc. We have our own COPS core. CITIZENS ON PATROL.They patrol the streets in an official police car. They do not carry guns, cannot issue traffic tickets. I am thankful to have this type of security. As far as the movie, It was better than expected.
0 out of 3 people found the following review useful: Nice try..., 24 March 2002 Author: JoeyDVDZ from New Jersey, USA
This could have been a good movie, except it was too tame. Not enough menace in the menace, if you know what I mean. If you want to at least read it done right, read a novel called The Association, by Bentley Little. It's almost the exact same concept, but it actually makes you fear the big boogey man.
0 out of 3 people found the following review useful: Not the best I´ve seen., 5 February 2001 Author: bubbelbjornen from Andreas Sweden
I saw this film 2001 and didn´t like it too much.John Ritter is a security agent who´s given the opportunity to move to a totally crimeless society outside the town. He moves to this place with his family, and in the beginning everything seems like heaven. But after a while he and his family begins to think that everything is not right.The man (Hal Linden) who´s running the place is a very excentric old man with a lot of strange ideas... Pretty good idea (but I´ve seen it before....)
1 out of 5 people found the following review useful: Perfection-not for human kind?, 18 August 2003 Author: FcPoliFan from Timisoara, Romania
Looking beyond my fabulous title for this review, we have-had-will have- in front of our eyes, which are often connected to narrow minds, a blank movie, with blank characters and with a blank intrigue. Actually that means it's...not too good, right? Sure, the idea is all there might ever be to this movie, an idea which I would like to analyze a bit further on. But except the idea, what does this movie have? Not much, really, but enough, enough to be decent...unlike others. SPOILERSLet me put it this way: this is very much a movie made for children, which sadly and unsuccessfully tries to be for grown ups. Especially regarding the acting, the plot and the way the plot develops. And even more just by looking at the idiotic security officers. They could actually be placed on a movie poster for this "creation". The story at hand is about a family which moves to "the perfect place", a community which its members like to regard as flawless. Surely, though, the dream of human perfection starts falling apart day by day and frame by frame. Yet I think this special society is how our world will soon look like. Democracy might very well be terribly diminished and all there might be left from this idea will be a vague shadow. We are already being controlled through the internet and just think that with the satellites we humans have launched into orbit, we can spy on each other(or better to say we can be spied upon) regardlessly of our feelings and desires. I just fear that this total control (which should be for our good) will actually lead man kind to a terrible dark age sometime in the future. We never like to be told what to do, do we? And humans should never be perfect, because then they there would exist Gods among humans. Sure, this movie might be fun to watch, sometime, after midnight, when you're really bored and don't have anything else to do(as it was in my case) but it will never ever gain a mark higher than 6.5.
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