Loves Unending Legacy + Saving
Sarah Caine (Fox DVD)
Picture:
C+/C Sound: C+/B- Extras: D Telefilms: D
Michael
Landon Jr. is trying to follow in his father’s footsteps with telefilms in the
mode of Highway To Heaven. Unfortunately, as lite as that show was,
these productions are shockingly lightweight, overly melodramatic, usually set
a century ago having nostalgia that is more like turning back the clock than
anything else and a matching agenda that combines Rollback politics against
women with obvious Christo-Right Wing ideology his father would have never
tried to do in such obvious, even arrogant ways.
Loves Unending Legacy has Erin Cottrell and Dale
Midkiff as the couple who may or may not come together in the Old West, but you
can very predictably guess what will happen, while Saving Sarah Caine is about how the title character (Tess Harper)
is “trying to be a man” by having a career.
When her sister dies, it is her fault, even though it is not and can a
good man make her a woman and “fix” her life?
At their
worse, these are very offensive, especially in the subtle, sinister way they
slip their agenda in. Compare to the
Tyler Perry films on two levels and the problems are more obvious. Besides African Americans being highly
marginalized in the Landon films, or being strangely out of place or odd in any
place in them, the Perry works are far more palpable and non-Blacks are never
marginalized. Then there is the
Christian faith factor, which is condescending and Right Wing in the Landon
works, while they are the return of the Religious Left in the Perry works.
Intended
or not, that is the way they break down and anyone who considers that analysis
“intellectual” is out of their gourd.
Now, you can judge for yourself.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on both have all kinds of motion blur,
but Sarah is even worse, softer and
color weak. The Dolby Digital is 5.1 on Legacy and only 2.0 Stereo on Sarah, showing that there was more
effort and a bit more money in the former than later. Sarah even has extras in the deleted scenes
(which deserved to be so) and a tired behind-the-scenes featurette that will
put you to sleep.
- Nicholas Sheffo
