I Am a Leaf In the Wind... Watch How I Soar

I'm coming to this particular party late, but I've been kind of distracted lately, y'know. (Start from the bottom if you have no idea what I'm talking about.)

The Firefly movie "Serenity" opened last weekend. I saw it opening night and have sat through three screenings in the intervening week. I will probably go again today.


As a rabid fan of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and, to a lesser extent, "Angel," I remember anxiously awaiting the arrival of Joss Whedon's third TV series, "Firefly" several years back. After watching the premiere, I came away somewhat confused and not terribly impressed. The show just didn't "click" with me and fell off my radar pretty quickly. (Actually, the same thing happened with Buffy; when I realized my mistake, I played catch-up seeing all the episodes I'd missed.)

I heard that the show was cancelled and didn't give it much more thought. Then, when the DVD set of the entire series came out, I kept reading raves about the show on the ViewAskew Message Board. Curious, I bought the set and spent a weekend watching every episode.

The show was amazing! The special effects were pretty much standard TV fare, but, like Buffy, the characters were completely three dimensional, the acting was superb and the dialogue was full of wit and intelligence. How could I have missed this?

I knew from Joss' appearance at the 2004 Chicago Wizard World Comic Convention that a Firefly movie was in the works. And the waiting began.

Online bits and pieces kept me up-to-date and the Sci-Fi channel's recent run of the original series helped slake my thirst for more Firefly. And then, finally, the movie appeared at my local Regal theater.

I won't review the movie here and now -- I wouldn't want to spoil it for anyone. Suffice to say, I haven't been this enthusiastic about a movie since Kevin Smith's "Dogma," which also inspired multiple viewings. The SFX are motion picture quality and the story is phenomenal. I took a friend to my third showing who never saw the TV series and he loved it, so I feel reasonable confident in saying that you don't need to know the source material to enjoy this movie.

If you want two hours of pure enjoyment -- if you want to leave a theater having laughed and gasped and felt like your entertainment dollars were genuinely well spent -- go see "Serenity."