HIGHLANDER: THE FINAL DIMENSION
A film review by Rob Furr
Copyright 1995 Rob Furr
Highlander: The Randomly-Selected Descriptive Phrase
If there's been a more chaotic entertainment franchise to come out in the last decade than HIGHLANDER and associated works, I haven't found it. From the original film, which is arguably one of the greatest fantasies ever to appear on celluloid (not that that's saying much; its competition has been, for the most part, on the level of, say, KRULL,) we've seen a slew of derivative works ranging from the entertaining to the surreal. There's HIGHLANDER, the syndicated drama, there's HIGHLANDER: THE ANIMATED SERIES, there's HIGHLANDER II: THE QUICKENING, and, now, HIGHLANDER: THE FINAL DIMENSION (a.k.a. HIGHLANDER: THE SORCEROR, I believe.) The two television series have nothing to do with each other, the movies have absolutely nothing to do with the television series, and little to do with each other, and, for all I know, there'll soon be HIGHLANDER: THE CEREAL, which will have about as much to do with anything else in the series as the a small potato in Riner, VA, has to do with economic policy in the Ukraine.
That very confusion has led to decreased expectations for further entries in the HIGHLANDER canon; what can you look forward to once you've experienced the true, majestic awfulness that is HIGHLANDER: THE ANIMATED SERIES? So, I approached the current HIGHLANDER movie with some trepidation; could the movie makers pull something watchable from the morass of the HIGHLANDER mythos?
They did. Amazing, but true.
Note that I didn't say that it was a *good* movie, and I very carefully did not imply that HIGHLANDER: THE FINAL DIMENSION is a *great* movie, but it is watchable.
The previous film entry, HIGHLANDER II: THE QUICKENING was completely and utterly rotten as a sequel. On the other hand, if, through some miracle, the viewer could forget that the original movie ever existed, it wasn't that bad. Not great, not by a long shot, but it was only a slightly-lower-than-average attempt at movie-making, with "only" four or five gaping holes where a plot should have been.
On the other hand, we have HIGHLANDER: THE FINAL DIMENSION which, as a sequel, is pretty good. As a stand-alone movie, it stinks. The viewer *has* to have seen the original movie to enjoy this one. Apparently realizing this, the movie makers used several clips from the original film in this one. Events, characters, terms, scenes, and locales from the original are all used or referred to during the course of THE FINAL DIMENSION, and only a knowledge of HIGHLANDER itself can save it from totally confusing the viewer.
So, if you've never seen the original HIGHLANDER, this is a movie to stay far, far away from.
On the other hand, if you *have* seen the original movie, THE FINAL DIMENSION is actually not that bad. It suffers a bit from sequelitis, in that certain scenes are frame-by-frame copies of scenes in the original (For instance, Kane, the primary antagonist of THE FINAL DIMENSION dresses like the Kurgan, has the same voice as the Kurgan, and acts like the Kurgan, even down to his manic driving style. It's actually a pity he's not the Kurgan, but, hey, there can be only one,) it needs the previous movie, and bits of it are included for no readily apparent reason ... but that's about it. The filmmakers do a credible job apologizing for HIGHLANDER II; they strive for and mostly capture the feel of the original movie. The cinematography is weaker, the transitions that were the signature of the original are slightly more intrusive, the music is more generic....
... and yet, it's as close to the original as you can get without digging Freddy Mercury up and having him record another soundtrack.
On the Furr Scale, this is either a solid three star two-star movie (a pretty good, if unambitious movie) or a pitiful one star two-star movie (a rotten unambitious movie,) depending on whether or not you've seen the original. Moreover, it's exactly the prototypical matinee movie; this is the perfect movie for a slow Saturday afternoon. Park your brain at the door, and let it flow in one eye and out the other.
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