Rating: 
Summary: Wow!
Review: I was hooked - could not stop watching. When this film came out I became a slave to my TV for two weeks! This is by far the best, all inclusive, modern myth movie ever made. Dakota is adorable and the best decision casting directors made. Its a soap opera for intellectuals. A stunning, beautiful, emotionally moving, and thought provoking film. Four the next fourteen hours, sit back, relax, and let yourself believe.
Rating: 
Summary: boring peripheral drama overdose
Review: I love sci-fi and badly wanted to enjoy Taken but there is so much boring, unrelated drama that it's unbearable! People are loving it so maybe it was just me, BUT PLEASE TRY TO CATCH SOME ON TV BEFORE BUYING!!In addition, I must say that this mini-series is in many ways, an abomination. Spielberg, or whoever was spoonfeeding him, took legitimate stories from historical sources and twisted them into attributing all ufo's to aliens. "Yes, everything is clear to me now- the government really IS trying to protect me from the terrible secret of space". Too much propaganda and not enough storytelling/entertainment. I suspect this review will help 1 in 1 million.
Rating: 
Summary: 'Taken' is a great idea, but poorly executed
Review: What a great idea - present all the UFOlogy in a quasi-documentary epic tale of three generations of families that have encounters with aliens. As a fan of both relationship dramas and sci-fi, I was excited by the meeting of these two genres. It's astounding that the combination of this great starting point and Spielberg's influence produced such mediocre material. Overall, if the show is watched in moderation, you may be entertained - a decent story with many plots, lots of aliens and UFOs, good acting (with a few exceptions), and just enough soap-opera drama to keep you coming back. However, most of the series is surprisingly not engaging and represents everything I abhor about typical TV miniseries - way too much ambition with such low quality writing and directing, slow pacing compensating for a lack of interesting dialogue and plot development, very standard visual style and music (I thought the selection of pop songs in a few of the eps was very poor and misplaced), overuse of narration, and a high dull-to-interesting character ratio. Much of the dialogue is stilted, there is no comic relief, and anytime the show attempts to be 'gritty' with a scene of violence, it is over-the-top and out of place. Each episode in the first half (the best half) of the series typically cuts quickly between 3 or 4 stories, which helps to keep the pace of a such a long episode moving, and each episode focuses on new stories and characters. Few of the characters/actors are interesting enough to want to watch them for more that a couple of episodes, so the short screen time for each generation's story serves to compensate for average writing. And when an episode does stumble onto a great character, they are often not given enough screen time and I found myself bored by the other subplots. Sally Clarke, the young Jacob Clarke, and the older Jesse Keys were easily some of the best characters and performances, but their stories were only given treatment in at most two episodes. In contrast to the first 6 eps, the last four episodes focus on the same generation of characters and the same story line. The average writing, one-dimensional characters, and occasionally sub-par acting is very obvious when so much time (6 hours!) is spent on one story. Also, within each episode the writers chose to focus on just a few events, which means that in order for the story to be engaging the dialogue and character development should be top-notch. However, these episodes are very plodding, especially the hostage scene and much of the North Dakota story. The series would be much better if every ep was trimmed to an hour or less. This is a series that was trying to work on many levels - there's the alien and conspiracy story, the relationships of people and generations, the themes of fear, denial, balance of emotion and reason, importance of family and home, etc. It would have worked so much better if subtlety was used, but instead the little girl Allie is always narrating and explaining the themes and telling us what a character is feeling. This narration is very intrusive; it might have been okay if it were only bookending each episode, but it is used at the most awkward times. There is no allowance for ambiguity of interpretation, all motivations are explained; do the writers think we are stupid? Most of the fun of watching a story is from trying to understand why characters do what they do. I applaud the creators for the great idea - the results had the framework for a truly amazing series. It's very disappointing that it did not work better.
Rating: 
Summary: Too bad it's not a continuing series
Review: This is not only the best miniseries I've ever seen, but is better than most or all TV shows out there right now. The story is incredible. Spielberg and Bohem (the series' writer) have outdone themseves. If you are looking for a thinking person's science fiction show, something more thought-provoking and thought-requiring than the average sci-fi action show, Taken is for you. I only wish it were continuing, because this is the kind of quality program I don't want to see end.
The visual effects are also of impressive quality, movie-standard or close and much better than I have come to expect from any miniseries and most TV shows. The acting is another place where Taken shines. Every actor does an impressive job with some very complex and in some cases otherworldly characters. Worthy of special note is Dakota Fanning's portrayal of Allie Keys. It's rare to find any actor who can convey so much with such a nonphysical role; Allie rarely does anything more physical than walking, most of what she does is either psychic in nature or simply emitting wonderfully scripted and delivered dialogue. To find this ability in an actor who is young enough to play a nine year old character - and therefore has not had time to build up a large amount of experience - is truly incredible. She will go far.
Rating:
Summary: An Awesome Miniseries
Review: After being pulled into Taken during the reairing on Sunday nights (I did not get the Sci-fi Channel when Taken first aired), I decided to asked my dad for the DVD set for my birthday after only seeing the first episode. When the DVD set was released (when I only saw the first four episodes) I bought the set with the money my dad gave me. I finished all ten episodes by the end of the weekend. If I would have waited till the reairing of the series was over, I would not have been able to wait a week till the next episode will again air. I think that Taken deserved to get the Emmy for Outstanding Miniseries (although I had not seen the other nominees). I hope Spielberg and his team will make a sequel so that we can see what happens to Allie and if she ever comes back to Earth.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing miniseries!!
Review: I bought this miniseries on DVD having never seen it before. My confidence that "Taken" would be a brilliant masterpiece was truly justified!! Steven Spielberg is a genius!! Having always had an interest in the idea of life beyond our realm, I thought he really brought the history of this curiousity to life. I especially loved Catherine Dent's character, but I felt all the characters were so nicely developed and interwoven with each other. The little girl, Dakota Fanning, was very impressive as the narrator and, in many ways, the focus of the entire series. The DVD extras were nicely done, very informative and insightful. I highly recommend this miniseries to anyone with even a passing interest in the possibility of life beyond our own!!
Rating:
Summary: Taken is excellent!!!
Review: I didn't have the opportunity to see this until it came out on DVD. I'm glad of that fact. If I had had to wait more then 5 minutes to start the next episode, I would have gone crazy. I couldn't make my self stop watching. This is one of the best mini series I have ever seen, and I highly recommend it. Keeps you guessing, and wanting more. I hated to see it end.
Rating:
Summary: What are they smoking....?
Review: The Sci-Fi channel has now made hundreds of boring/bad TV films made for Cable and this is the King of all bad TV shows. It has bad performances, bad effects, bad script writing,bad approach to the subject manner, and just lacks humanity. Universal should be ashamed of themselves for putting this trash together.
Rating:
Summary: Taken
Review: I saw the series on Sci Fi channel. Awesome. I can't wait until I own it in my collection.
Rating:
Summary: Not Enough, Too Much
Review: * Steven Spielberg's ten-episode mini-series TAKEN, made for the
Sci-Fi Channel, provides a history of alien encounters on Earth over
three generations of three families: the Keys, a family who
fascinates the Visitors with their strong will to survive; the
Clarkes, who include Visitor genetics in their bloodline; and the
Crawfords, government "spooks" trying to crack, at any cost, the
mystery of the Visitors. TAKEN has generally good production values and acting. It does not,
however, have much in the way of interesting ideas. The story
elements are predictable: spindly big-headed aliens, abductions
aboard UFOs, vicious government conspiracies, nothing new. The story
line propels itself using personalities and relationships and not
speculative concepts. This is no doubt fine for many people, but for
myself I find it disappointing that the series takes not the least
interest in what the effect of a first contact with aliens would be on
human society and history. It would seem such an event would have at least *some* effects, but
TAKEN doesn't consider them. It doesn't even really say very much
about the Visitors. I get the impression that Spielberg isn't really
that wrapped into science fiction and doesn't really see the genre as
a literature of ideas. In fact, in some cases he seems to see it more
as a platform for moralizing. "Mr. Spielberg, if I were after moral
instruction, I wouldn't be looking for it in a Sci-Fi channel
miniseries." OK, OK, many viewers don't care about such issues and so that all is a
matter of my personal preference. However, I will say that though
TAKEN does have its shining bits -- Joel Gretsch's Owen Crawford is a
fascinating character, unbelievably ruthless and cynical while seeming
miserable and pathetic at the same time -- it falls on its face in
places. For example, there's one gruesome scene in which the Bad Guys do nasty
things to a guinea pig, which was so over the top that I found it
funny in a ghastly sort of way: "These people are supposed to be
ultra-villains? This is the sort of sick stunt I would expect from a
gang of frat boys who've had way too much to drink." I will also make one particularly strong criticism in that all the
episodes were 90 minutes long, and I could see no reason why any of
them were. Every episode could have been trimmed to an hour, even 45
minutes, and lost little or nothing -- the story spins its wheels more
than it needs to. In sum, TAKEN is watchable and generally entertaining. It is, unfortunately,
not very memorable.
|
