The A-Team was the "bees knees" back in the 80's. Most of our relatives (or you) might remeber watching this series as kids and just imagining different scenarios they would get into the next week. I've only caught a few episodes here and there on some channels, but I can see why this show appealed to kids and adults. The show promoted over-the-top cartoonish violence and worked hard to keep it as non-lethal and family-friendly as possible, and I wholeheartedly enjoyed those few episodes I saw. Now, almost 2 decades after the show ended, we get the A-Team movie. A modern day take on the show. Is it any good? Can it capture the spirit of what made the show so endearing? Well... you'll just have to read on and see.

The basic plot of the movie is about The A-Team getting sent to prison for murdering their commanding officer and conducting an "unauthorized" mission in Baghdad. (If you didn't catch the fact that this is a modern day retelling of the show, the movie gives us a subtitle that flat out tells you that this is set in the present day.) Their mission was to retrieve U.S. treasury printing plates from Iraqi insurgants. They do end up retrieving the plates and a billion dollers in counterfiet American currency, but bad things happen and they are thrown into seperate maximum security facilities. (Even though in the opening narrationCorey Burton says that they all escaped from one maximum security facility. Contiunity people!) So they end up breaking out of their respective prisons and hatch a plan to get revenge and get the plates back and clear their names. You know, standard protocal for these types of films.

I liked quite a few things about this movie. First off, the sub par story ended up feeling very engaging because of the characters, especially from the A-Team themselves. Their traits are well intact from the transition from show to modern day film. Hannibal still has his cigars and classic one-liners, Face is still a really good con man, B.A. is still afraid of flying, (which is explained in the movie. I don't know if it was also explained in the show.) and Murdock is still as crazy as he was in the show. Also, another character that was really engaging was the antagonist of the picture simply named Lynch played by Patrick Wilson. This guy clearly had a good time making this movie. He plays this character so snarky and so smug that I couldn't help but find this guy to be EPICALLY AWESOME in every scene he's in. (But nothing can compare to the ridculously hilarious Max from The Losers.) Secondly, the action sequences (and there are a lot of them) are actually well put together. The filmmakers really respected the over the top cartoonish violence that the show offered and it shows here because the last thing I liked about this movie was the fact that the improbability factor went threw the roof. But unfortunatly, this is also something I did not like about the movie.

There are times when you can get away with the impossible in movies like this. I can think of one scene in The Bourne Ultimatum where Jason Bourne drives a car, in reverse, off of the roof of a 3-storey parking garage with nothing but a seatbelt to absorb the jarring impact waiting for him below. So he drives full speed off the roof, crashes into two parked cars below, and just gets up and walks away without a scratch on him. This kind of impossibility I can accept but in the A-Team movie, there are so many impossible things happening that I can't help but think that this whole movie takes place in some alternate universe where everyone is EXTREME all the time and doing impossible things like what is found here on a daily basis. It's crazy. (Flying a tank???!?) But having to make this impossibility real is what CGI is all about. It's to make these scenarios as real looking as possible. Sadly, this is my second observation on the negative side of this film. The CGI found here is very obvious and fake-looking. The third point against this movie is that the plot can sometimes get a little confusing. I'm referring to the plates here. They change hands so many times that you'll have to make a checklist of people who possess the case with the plates inside.

Overall, I actually found this movie to be quite enjoyable. It's not as good as the show, but it does come close to recreating its spirit. The acting is actually quite good especially from the A-Team guys themselves. Rampage Jackson managed to pull off his own take on B.A. Even though the plot is paper-thin and the CGI is not that spectacular, the characters are engaging enough that it feels like your 2 hours did not go to waste.

I give The A-Team a 7/10

(On a sidenote: There is an obvious production goof in the movie that my cousin and I spotted right away. Pay attention to the scene between Pike and B.A. in the bank parking garage and you'll see it right after that scene ends in a shot that follows Pike as he blasts his way through the bank's ground floor.)