Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Awesome Movie

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I know, I know: The Kramer & Tracy original has become a true classic, but...I prefer THIS little masterpiece. There is a lot of little great points that makes this TV release much more than that: a) The characters performance. Not only Kirk Douglas (he really fit his character), not only Robards (so often a secondary actor), but also Jean Simmons, Darren McGavin and the Judge, even the little Rachel Brown or Kyle Secor. We can guess a master hand behind all these. b) The characters are very very well developed: Mathew Brady has much more power than Fredric March in 60s version (even we can intimate a little with him in moments as his speech at church), Robards owes nothing to the great Tracy. The journalist is here more interesting (more heavy, more cynical, more aged-atheist) than Gene Kelly. It's a good point the youthfulness and artlessness of both the teacher and fiancée c) The director, thought obviously more limited by budget, is capable to offer an equilibrated narration and some great moments (such as the confronted reception of Brady and Drummond)Sometimes we were more impressed by the version the first saw, if this is good. Maybe this is also the case (I saw first the Green film).

This 1988 version of INHERIT THE WIND tried a slightly different approach to the story than the film or the 1965 versions. Apparently there was a deeper delving into the historical material (and - unlike the period of the film and the first dramatic version on television - the resurgence of anti - evolutionary voters in the country) to make the story fairer.Jason Robards played Drummond/Darrow very well - in the tradition of Muni, Tracy, and Melvyn Douglas. But it was the performance of Kirk Douglas as Brady/Bryan that was unique. As I have mentioned elsewhere in these reviews, Bryan did have valid reasons to dislike Darwinism aside from religious feelings. The issue of Social Darwinism, created by an English elitist snob named Herbert Spencer, had been grabbed by various people in power positions in big business and politics that suggested that the best people were the top of the evolutionary tree - and that big business had the right to destroy small competitors due to "survival of the fittest". Bryan hated this idea, as opposite to Jeffersonian Democracy. He actually intended, after his own humiliation on the witness stand by Darrow to put Darrow on the stand to explain his acceptance of Social Darwinism. Judge Raulston, the trial judge, refused to allow this.If that had been brought out in this production, it would have set it apart and given a more balanced view of the two parties who clashed in Dayton. Instead, Douglas played Brady like a revivalist (similar to Begley, without Begley's physical resemblance to Bryan). But he also kept trying to keep up the friendly feelings that Darrow and Bryan had when both were fighting on the same side on political issues from 1893 to 1908. While all the productions include those moments of nostalgia between them, this attempted to suggest that Douglas/Brady hoped to "save" the soul of Robards/Drummond. It was a curious idea, but it just did not seem realistic (given their diametrically opposite views on evolution and the Tennessee law). I give this a 7 for the production but the approach was a misfire.

Weakest of the three versions of the story of the Scopes Trial this version suffers from shortening, rewriting and worst of all commercials.This isn't to say its bad, its not. The problem is that compared to the original Spencer Tracy film this film comes off as a good summer stock to the originals Broadway show case.The cast is game. Kirk Douglas is perhaps a bit odd at first as the William Jennings Bryan character, but after a few minutes he slips into the groove and all is fine. Jason Robards' is excellent, unfortunately there is something about the way this was put together for TV that kills his momentum in the home stretch.Seeing this with out commercials doesn't help since the pauses still are there.If its on try it, but if you must see some version of this go for one of the other two.

Robards steals the picture and won an Emmy as a wonderful Henry Drummond, while Kirk Douglas feels too uncomfortable as Matthew Harrison Brady. The version runs at an okay pace, but doesn't have the luster of Stanley Kramer's 1960 version. With the exception of Robards, many of the other performances are either passable or mediocre.