Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ Goes South

If Shakespeare were working in Hollywood today, he would, no doubt, be rewritten by hacks--his stories reduced to mere plot points connecting cheesy special effects.

NBC’s Sunday night movie, a Civil War-era retelling of “The Tempest,” offers a frightening vision of what would result. A miscalculation of epic proportions, this revision of one of the Bard’s masterworks is at times laugh-out-loud awful, at times offensive.

At some point in development, there was an idea here that held some promise. Shakespeare’s original is a story of brother against brother, and the war between the states could have provided an intriguing context. But as written by James Henerson and executive-produced by Bonnie Raskin and Jack Bender (who also directed), everything turns out wrong.

Gone is Shakespeare’s glorious language, replaced with mock-Southern talk. Gone is the Bard’s subplot involving two bumblers, stripping the drama of (intentional) comic relief. And missing are the forgiveness and personal growth that make the original so powerful.

Shakespeare’s Prospero is now Gideon Prosper (Peter Fonda), nominally in charge of his family’s Mississippi plantation but more interested in learning magic from one of his slaves (Donzaleigh Abernathy). Gideon’s greedy younger brother, Anthony (John Glover), orchestrates Gideon’s ouster, sending him into hiding.

Flash-forward a dozen years: Gideon, his daughter, Miranda (Katherine Heigl), and the magic teacher’s son, Ariel (Harold Perrineau Jr.), have made a home in a bayou. When warring troops move into the area, Anthony wanders near, and Gideon plots revenge.

Prosper’s hideaway looks to have been copied from “Swiss Family Robinson,” and Caliban, renamed “Gator Man,” seems to be a cousin of the creeps in “Deliverance.” Such details might have you laughing yourself hoarse, until you realize: One of the most painful chapters in U.S. history has been reduced here to little more than an action-adventure backdrop. In the process, Southerners have been depicted as either arch-villains or boobs, and African Americans as voodoo practitioners. What were these people thinking?

* “The Tempest” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on NBC. The network has rated it TV-14 (may not be suitable for children younger than 14).