Knight Rider 2000 (1991)

As really that in the future of Knight Rider that the cars would be made. Though it does get it right still it is far from it. But maybe not in our lifetimes.As Michael Knight who owns a fishing shop and is called back into by his former boss for thirty days, Devon Mills. Despite wanting to stay in retirement he agrees to do so as he also counts Devon as a friend.Liked Devon to begin in the original show but then he got power hungry and if anybody was not a friend, it was him. As really gave him much to do. Despite Michael not needing backup. As Michael should had really told him off and threaten to quit as he could not come and go like KittSpeaking of Kitt Michael would only come back for him. And that he is disappointed to see his "friend" being treated like dirt by the new owner and boss of FLAG Maddock, who is more of a creep as Devon the lesser of the two evils.But still as Michael is about to walk away, he agrees to fix up Kitt himself. But as police corruption has hit an all time high and only one female good cop on Michael and Kitt's side, they team up for one last ride.Look for a pre-X-Files Mitch Pileggi as the heavy on the movie. Cheesy acting to say the least. But good to see three of the members of the original KR back.

A TV movie updating of the classic KNIGHT RIDER series, this was envisaged as a pilot for a new revamped show which didn't get picked up. However, it's still pretty entertaining for what it is, and it has a lot of fan-pleasing elements included too. The story sees KITT rebuilt from scratch and David Hasselhoff coming out of retirement to help fight corruption from within the police force as well as a murderous mad man intent on wreaking havoc in the city.KNIGHT RIDER 2000 has a pleasant early '90s feel to it which brings it in line with sci-fi fare from that era. The early futuristic set dressing is quite fun as is the political debate, and the cast members all do a dedicated job. I was particularly delighted to see Mitch Pileggi playing another villainous role riffing on his turn in Wes Craven's SHOCKER. The one let down is the action; there are few action scenes and those that do take place simply aren't very good, but the film as a whole has a solid ambiance that makes it rather likable.

This movie stunk to high ....This movie's plot was a joke and was made a joke. A total smack in the face of the series! I can understand Michael retiring and leaving KITT to the foundation to continue on with another driver, but once I found out that KITT got dismantled after he got "outdated", I was enraged!! Why didn't they just give him to Michael? After ALL they went though together, why couldn't they just honor Michael and have KITT retire with him. Seeing KITT in a BIN was way to heart breaking!!! Killing off Devon was another terrible piece of the plot. That was totally not needed to be done, and for what...As for the ending, it finally put KITT in the RED car. The problem with that is I remember in one of the episodes that KITT had to be covered inside a RED fancy car shell for a mission and when he finally was out of it they asked him if he liked RED. He said "I'm the Knight Industries Two Thousand ... not a tomato on wheels". Now I totally agree. The car should be BLACK, not RED (just doesn't fit).There were other terrible pieces of the plot and I could go on for several paragraphs but let's just say the movie did not have any good spots at all! You can tell Glen Larson had nothing to do with this movie. The plot was just not him. Hopefully in the next movie (yes, hopefully), now that they might have Glen Larson on board, they will just forget this movie existed (leave it in an alternate universe) and have it continued straight from the series' end and not this unfortunately made movie's end.

This film while it has some good points is a fine example of what happens when Canadian's get their hands on high octane 80's action shows. They did it to Airwolf and the tried to do it to Knight Rider.This was obviously a pilot episode for a show that never was and the reasons it never was are obvious. The idea was fine but the execution left a lot to be desired. The flaws are even more apparent after watching the first season episodes and the original pilot in the same DVD set. The original show had the right idea and concept behind it. The car is the star of the show, it is indestructible, and has an arrogant personality to match. Combine that with the music that keeps you pumped into the action, a bunch of gratuitous explosions, death defying stunts and a pre-Baywatch David Hasselhoff and you have a certifiable 80's hit. The first misfire in this project was taking the car out of the equation for 60% of it. I can understand that the Knight 4000 Pontiac Banshee was a little more expensive and one of a kind then the Knight 2000 Firebird but they didn't even present us with a single stunt that couldn't have been performed by an '84 Dodge Omni with fake wood paneling. On a positive note the new car itself had the potential of being really cool. The Banshee concept car is a sleek and cool update of the Firebird from the original series and seems to fit what we'd like to see as the KITT of the future. I think they should have painted it black, as a bright Red car tends to stand out almost as much as Starsky and Hutch's striped tomato. I understand they didn't have the budget to make several Banshee's to do the terrific stunts the original show had, but they could have tried a little harder to up the action with the car. The second big problem was the music. The original score was exactly that, original. You could identify the show by its theme alone; it is almost as famous as the car. Knight Rider 2000 seemed to emphasize the kind of synthesizer music that the worst fare on the sci-fi channel usually gets. It's very soft, it's very soothing and it sounds like it should be on a relaxation tape and not an action show. Third. I hate the way that shows like this exploit the future or at least how shows used to exploit that great year 2000. It was as if they felt that they could slap the year 2000 on a show and make it seem like is somewhere in the 24th century. They tend to present a time where Utopian societies formed almost overnight and replaced years of humanities attempts to prevent anything of the sort. I'm not holding this critique of this show alone, they did it throughout the 90's almost up to y2k when they realized, you know what it's nearly the year 2000 and society hasn't suddenly and magically morphed into an idealistic utopia like in star trek, nor has it been taken over by rampaging robots or evil computers. So why is it that they, in 1991, would assume for some reason that we would suddenly invent a cryogenic prison system, amazing brain transfer devices, sonic stun guns and the complete outlaw of all handguns by the year 2000. Now if I'm not mistaken things like this usually take about ten to twenty years to perfect and put into real practice, yet they felt that nine years later all of these magical changes would take place. Combine that with their jokes about President Dan Quayle, as if a gun ban would pass under that kind of administration. The Fourth major issue is once again we find ourselves in an unnamed American city that looks suspiciously like Vancouver. It's like Stargate SG-1 "See the Universe of Vancouver" cause to quote the great Buckaroo Banzai "No mater where you go, there you are." I suppose it's no worse then in the 70's and 80's when every unnamed American city was LA. But it seems to me that when you have an action show against criminals you set it in some place like LA. Not to knock Vancouver's own criminal element, especially in the Utopian future of the year 2000, but Canadian shows always come off as somewhat stale, dry cleaned and pressed in a such a way that seems to brush away the gritty nature of classic American TV. What is Knight Rider without KITT? I'll tell you what it is; it's David Hasselhoff and his partner running around with a sonic stun gun in a shopping mall. It was the action and the car that made the original show what it was, and by trying to up the science fiction angle to cover for the lack of anything going on in the plot or on the screen it made for a very long hour and a half. Unlike the producers of KR2k Hasselhoff figured out the right way to present this kind of mundane action, and while that show is not remembered for it's plots or it action, it is remembered for all the hot women running around in Bikini's. The failure of this to take off is the same as the failure of Baywatch Nights. David Hasselhoff - hot women in swim suits and - action stunt talking car = something that will be popular in Germany but leave the rest of the world scratching its head.