If you were a diehard fan of the cult-favorite TV series Firefly, then Serenity will surely satisfy you. If not, then you’re probably better off skipping it entirely. The heavyhanded writing and direction by Joss Whedon, coupled with the hamfisted, cardboard acting of Nathan Fillion, reduce this big-screen offering to just another mishmashy sound-and-fury action movie.

The setting is 500 years in the future. Owing to overpopulation, denizens of Earth have emigrated to other worlds, known as the Core planets, where life is pretty darn good, and trade and communication betwixt the planets is booming. Mal Reynolds (Fillion) and the crew of his Firefly-class spaceship Serenity travel the heavens, taking on jobs that usually skirt the edge of legality, and sometimes dive headfirst over said edge into a pool of sin.

Mal’s crew includes his second in command; Zoe (Gina Torres); pilot Wash (Alan Tudyk); muscular hothead Jayne (Adam Baldwin); mechanic Kaylee (Jewel Staite); and three passengers-turned-crew – Simon, the doctor (Sean Maher), Simon’s sister River (Summer Glau), and Inara (Morena Baccarin), a Companion (otherwise known as a high-class call girl). Over the course of fifteen episodes, the crew becomes used to one another, just as devotees of the series will have grown accustomed to their faces. This is key; the more you know a character in a TV series, the more forgiving you’ll be if the subsequent movie doesn’t explain everything sufficiently, because you’ll have the requisite background information already.

Simon and River are fugitives; Simon busted his sister out of a government facility, where faceless drones picked apart and brain and drove her quite crazy. Trouble is, no one knows what she’s capable of, and throughout the series she’s shown flashes of skills beyond that which a typical teenage girl should possess. In the movie, River’s instability is making things tough on the crew; because the government is looking for her and Simon, Mal must turn down jobs in order to fly below everyone’s radar. So times are tough, and tensions are running high.

When River – apparently directed subliminally – engages in a melee against a fewscore men (and wins) and Simon subdues her with a safe word, the pressure for Serenity to hand over the fugitives increases dramatically. Just before succumbing to the safe word, River utters her own mysterious word – “Miranda.” Who or what is Miranda?

Warning: Don’t read further if you’re a big Firefly fan. You’re not going to like it…

Serenity felt to me like an amateur-hour show. Yes, the effects are pretty cool, although nothing spectacular. But the writing’s subpar. Whedon seems to have a pretty good sense of plot movement – no time for exposition or reflection needed – but he’s not so adept in characterizations. I got the distinct feeling that the actors, for the most part, rose above their stilted dialog to turn in fine, appealing performances. Particularly effective was Baldwin as the scoundrel Jayne; he does get some of the funniest lines, but more importantly he knows how to deliver a comedic performance. Appropriately adorable is Staite as Kaylee (dig those everlit eyes), and flawlessly elegant is Baccarin as Inara.

But the one character on whom the entire show and movie rest is also the one that’s the most confounding – Malcolm Reynolds. Ethical vagueness is a very good descriptor for your characters to have; why announce his or her intentions every step of the way? But this can be problematic when the character is constantly changing attitudes and approaches, and those changes don’t make a heck of a lot of sense.

For example, there have been numerous times in which Mal has performed some sort of loyal act for his crew, even the fugitives. That’s honorable. But then there have also been numerous times in which he’s laid down the law, tyrant style, to that same crew. I don’t mean with a simple my-way-or-the-highway approach, because that’s certainly not unacceptable from the captain of the ship. I mean in a cruel, hateful manner. Here’s what it boils down to for me – you can be a lovable Han Solo rogue, or you can be a mean despot, but it’s really tough for any actor to play a character who’s both. A good actor, perhaps, could pull this off, and Fillion is not a good actor. He has very little range; when he’s joking, he wears this weird half-smile, not quite as developed as a sly grin, and when he’s upset, his voice gets thick as week-old jelly. And that’s about it.

But back to the movie itself. I liked the plot, although certainly the fact that the show was over by the time filming begun played a huge role. The problem with this kind of approach is that a movie can feel as if plot devices were thrown in just for the sake of throwing everything into the mix. To clarify that statement would be folly; I’d risk spoiling some fun for you who haven’t watched the movie yet. What I’m saying is that although there are plenty of surprises, since the movie is based on a well-known TV series, you get this sense of nothing really mattering – it’s not as if there’ll be a Season 2 with the consequences of those surprises apparant.

I think Serenity (which, sorry, sounds more like adult diapers than a ship name) looks merely like a TV movie writ large; it’s not as exciting or intruiging as the show was, for all its foibles, and I think that although blinded-by-the-Whedon acolytes will no doubt think it’s the bee’s knees, the rest of us can do better.

Serenity: **