True fact: over a period of 16 years, through 8,000 blogposts, I have only used the phrase “bad movie” on Travalanche eight times, and in most of those cases, I either put the phrase in quotes (indicating it’s a phrase that OTHER people use) or I’m using it to explain…well, what I’m explaining right now, which is that to me there is no such thing, not to the extent that they should be dismissed with so sweeping a condemnation. The phrase strikes me as dilettantish. There are certainly boring movies, inexpensively produced movies, and so forth, but all such creations are mixtures of good and bad. A critic describes what he sees. If he is fair he brings up virtues and flaws in appropriate balance. No doubt sometimes I’ll get carried away, dwelling on flaws, usually with humor, sometimes with anger, but to call something a bad movie? That’s just laziness, the worst sin of all.
And, well, movies with flaws are frequently entertaining, often more entertaining than critically acclaimed ones. As for a 1993 two-part made-for-television dystopian disaster movie set in the year 2017 starring Craig T. Nelson, Culkin-aunt Bonnie Bedelia, and Richard T. Farnsworth? Right up my street! Break out the microwave popcorn! I learned of its existence while writing my recent post about Craig T. Nelson and located it on Tubi within a matter of hours. And I assure you I will not ignore the flaws. If your mind is too simple to understand that something with flaws is not “bad”, this blog is not for you.
At any rate, today is Earth Day, and The Fire Next Time is about the results of unchecked climate change and global warming, an issue that our culture has simultaneously been deeply concerned about…and ignoring for longer than I have been alive. One of the chief pleasures of the film, probably its main one, is observing what people (including experts) thought about this issue 30 years ago, and what ultimately came true (or didn’t) by the year in which the movie is set (2017). Wildfires in California, devastating hurricane in Louisiana, escalating worldwide temperatures? So far so good (bad).
But the good news is, here in North America things today are not nearly as dire as predicted back then. In The Fire Next Time, elevated UV levels limit the time fishermen can stay out on boats. The temperature is perpetually at a Soylent Green level and everyone has permanent sweat stains on their clothes. The Colorado River has evaporated down to just a trickle. American climate refugees sneak over the border into Canada (silly screenwriter, surely you know that when we reach that point, America will simply TAKE Canada!). Things are breaking down, much worse than they are today. In the film’s predictive dystopia, one can choose from any number of exclusive subcultures to join: militarized eco-warriors, Gaia-worshipping cultists, gated suburban communities full of Super-Karens. Oh yes, and the Amish, who pretty much remain as they always were. The landscape is pretty what we are accustomed to seeing in zombie movies. There is a lesson here, of mixed applicability, I think. In dystopian sci-fic, projections are almost always worse than the reality turns out to be. That doesn’t mean action shouldn’t be taken. Far from it. In 2024, we’re literally watching the ice caps melt, and there are days when parts of India are borderline unlivable. It’s just that we shouldn’t give in to feelings of inevitability and hopelessness, as it is sometimes tempting to do.
Anyway, that’s the setting! The plot? Basically, a Grapes of Wrath style refugee road trip. Displaced by the aforementioned hurricane, Louisiana fisherman Nelson (with a pretty paltry excuse for an accent) and his family head north, looking for cooler climes. Of Cajun heritage, their eventual destination is Nova Scotia, once known as Acadia, where the Cajun folks originally lived. (Naturally, Grapes of Wrath style, Farnsworth dies en route). There are other characters as well. Charles Haid of Hill Street Blues is Buddy, Nelson’s cynical brother-in-law who has made a fortune betting on the futures of dwindling resources. A very young Paul Rudd, looking about how he looks now, is the cult member who romances Nelson’s teenage daughter (and, honestly, who wouldn’t abandon their family to move into a labor camp with Paul Rudd?) Louise Fletcher (Nurse Ratched), rather hilariously, is the commandant of a scary ragtag militia. John Vernon (Dean Wormer from Animal House) is a cartoon Canuck, who give da fam’ly a warm bed and somet’ing to eat, yeah? And Jurgen Prochnow, whom I’d seen in 100 movies without ever learning his name, is Nelson’s old business partner and a rival for his wife.
Nelson’s a bit of a screw-up in this movie, a poster boy for all idiotically stubborn Americans. His whole bag is ignoring people who know more than he does, needlessly putting his family in constant jeopardy. He overfishes depleted grounds, stays put in his vulnerable riverside house when told to evacuate, turns down a generous loan, and lets his disaster insurance lapse. At one point, he even falls off a boat into Lake Ontario and has to swim to Canada. Sit DOWN on a moving vehicle, sir! If he was in a theatre fire, he’d probably go, “Never mind calling the firemen! I got it covered! Good thing I bought this Big Gulp!”
On a lighter note, there is a minor sci-fi element to the show. The cars are way snazzier and more futuristic than turned out to be the actual case in 2017, although in recent years we have begun to catch up with some of the more fanciful visions. More off base is the fact that in the film everyone drinks beer out of what look like plastic shampoo bottles. Huh? Ain’t nobody ever going to change from bottles and cans — that’s the whole point of a beer! And in one scene a scowling, 6’4″ Craig T. Nelson looks mighty irritated to be riding some bicycle contraption that appears to have been jacked from Clown Alley. The most hilarious touch of all was a scene where the news about Alaska seceding from the Union reaches our characters by way of USA Superfax. Faxes — even faxed news bulletins like this — were very much central to our lives for a very short time, but that technology was quickly rendered obsolete by e-mail, the internet and social media. Not to mention cell phones, let alone smartphones, which no one foresaw in 1993. When Nelson’s runaway teenage son gets Lost in America, the hero has to find AT&T pay phones to call relatives in his attempt to locate him. In a way, that’s about as dire a prediction as everything else in the movie, but the movie doesn’t know it. In another forgivable lack of foresight, characters are shown flying by SST, reminding us of one way in which society has actually regressed technologically, but has probably actually improved the environment.
The film’s most obvious boo-boo however, must surely be its title. The Fire Next Time is James Baldwin’s 1963 memoir! How dare anyone use this as a title for anything else ever again? The lapse in judgment contains its own punishment. Google the phrase and see which one you hit. When Marla Gibbs shows up in this film; I picture her as having assumed she signed up for the other one. Odetta’s in this one too. It’s in her guitar-playing hands that we learn why this movie is called by this title, when she performs the old gospel song the phrase is taken from. I howled at the cynicism of this corny gesture, inserted as an apparent afterthought near the end of the first episode. Odetta, one of the great 20th century folk artists, doesn’t even get any lines to speak, they just needed some Magical Negro energy I guess to soothe audience bias against all that inconvenient science talk! If all those pointy headed eggheads with their computers and thermometers won’t convince you the earth is in trouble, maybe a song about God’s Wrath will! (Spoiler alert: it didn’t.)
(Travalanche) 
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