Americanablog

Of all my childhood heroes, they had to do a biopic on Evel Knievel. Why?

Unfortunately, when trying to define and illustrate what lay beneath Knievel's macho bravado, all that apparently resides there is a blank canvas. In his heyday, he is shown to have been a jerk and a blowhard and, worse, suffered the sin of being monumentally uninteresting when he wasn't plotting death-defying stunts. As a result, TNT's "Evel Knievel" is the tedious tale of a shallow man, told with a garishness that perfectly matches its utter lack of depth.

Don't get me wrong. I'm as iconoclastic as the next malcontent. But, it's not as if Knievel has been "getting away with something" all these years. Childhood legend has it that he broke every bone in his body in pursuit of the ultimate jump. Can Tony Hawk make that claim? And how exciting can one be when he spends his days off in traction?

Personally, I'd rather see William H. Macy playing Jim Bakker in the "PTL Story". Or, Susan Powter in Abu Graihb. The prison, not the movie.