REVELATIONS

The unlikely duo are dubbed the Nutty Professor and the Flying Nun, and together they follow a series of clues that indicate the impending Armageddon.

I was intrigued when I first saw the commercials for Revelations on NBC this spring, but then, as Marcia Brady would say, "something suddenly came up," and I didn't see a single episode in this mini-series. I'm thinking it's just as well, because it's even more fun to watch on DVD, without commercials, and at your own pace. Admittedly, I felt a twinge of trepidation when I realized I'd committed to reviewing the series (bound for six hours, whether I liked it or not), but I was pleasantly surprised by its cinematic quality. The use of film actors (Bill Pullman, Natascha McElhone, and John Rhys-Davies) and Widescreen presentation make Revelations feel more like an actual movie than a TV mini-series, and somewhere in the process of watching, I went from making fun of it to not wanting it to end.

I must admit that one of the opening scenes is pretty funny, and I feared the rest of the series would play out similarly. A girl walks into her kitchen wearing low-rise jeans and a temporary tattoo, but her dad tells her she's not leaving the house until she changes her clothes. This causes her to miss the school bus, and by the time the she sets out for school in a decidedly unfashionable but symbolically angelic-looking rain slicker, a storm has kicked up. As she's crossing a golf course, she's struck by lightning, which somehow sends her shooting into the branches of a huge tree. She hangs there limply until she's struck yet again, finally falling to the ground. I knew those low-rise jeans were bad news: uncomfortable, unsightly, and likely to cause God to strike you dead!

This poor kid should be so lucky. Instead of dying, she's left braindead, and either the fillings lodged in her brain are causing her to quote the Bible in Latin and draw weird maps from her coma, or something very strange is going on. Since she's mumbling about the End of Days, it seems as though we're probably dealing with the latter.

Luckily, this is the only incident of its kind, and our heroes enter the scene here. The lovely Natascha McElhone plays Sister Josepha, a devout nun whose job is to witness miracles for the Eklind Foundation. She's smart, feisty, and fearless, not wide-eyed and sheltered, and her unconventional beliefs leave her at risk for excommunication. Bill Pullman stars as Dr. Richard Massey, a Harvard professor whose daughter was sacrificed by Satanists after he unwittingly mocked the devil in one of his lectures. As a man of science, he's not too interested in this miracle business, but when he realizes his daughter may be trying to communicate through the braindead girl, he's inextricably sucked in.

The unlikely duo are dubbed the Nutty Professor and the Flying Nun, and together they follow a series of clues that indicate the impending Armageddon. Along the way, they encounter virgin births, a woman carrying a horned fetus who claims she was raped by a beast, a pair of devilish twin "fashion models," and a couple of sinister-looking devil-cats. A showdown between Christ and the anti-Christ can't be far off, but Sister Josepha is convinced that she and Dr. Massey can forestall this inevitability. As much as Dr. Massey would like to believe it's all a bunch of hooey and head home, he finds himself personally tied to these events.

A reptilian devil-man with regenerating fingers (Michael Massee) serves as the primary antagonist in the film, and is one of the most unsettling villains to appear on television since the guy with the black eyeballs in Storm of the Century. He killed Massey's daughter, and is masterminding some deeply creepy stuff from his prison cell. He arranges for Dr. Massey's step-son to be kidnapped by Satan's flunkies, leaving Massey with no choice but to find him. Incidentally, the head flunkie is played by none other than Fred Durst—the very same Fred Durst who named an album after hot dog water and bragged about doing stuff with Britney Spears! Not that he isn't credible in the role - he's just not someone you'd expect to see in a movie.

By the middle of the series, I was enjoying hanging out with Dr. Massey and Sister Josepha so much that I almost stopped caring whether or not they were going to save the world. Massey is a man damaged by the loss of his daughter, who, despite his prestigious reputation, is somewhat alone in the world. I've liked Bill Pullman ever since they called him "the stupidest person on the face of the earth" in Ruthless People, but never gave much thought to whether he could actually act. Revelations proves that he's an actor with considerable depth, capable of communicating volumes just with the look in his eyes.

As much as I enjoyed these characters, perhaps the best thing about Revelations is the peaceful coexistence of science and religion in the same movie. It explores the notion that the two aren't as different as we might think, and it's nice to finally recognize that we're all just looking for an explanation of our origins, whether it's the Big Bang or Creation. How refreshing to view this quest as something we share, rather than something divisive. The Nutty Professor and The Flying Nun prove that it's truly possible for us all to get along and learn from one another.

DVD NOTES

The DVD extras are fairly brief, but after six hours, this is probably a good thing. The featurette is only about five minutes long, and has a splashy, hard rock, MTV vibe somewhat incongruous with the tone of the film. It does, however, reveal that Revelations was written by the author of The Omen—a very interesting sidebar which explains why this series is so darn good. Most of the deleted scenes don't add much to the story, but one or two of them add insight and help to further explain the plot.