A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

This dramatisation is on the whole a good one. Albeit with a weak ending. A reasonable cast help to flesh out this tale of an ordinary (well more or less) man trying to outrun the all powerful authorities. Personally, I sank into this dramatisation like an old pair of slippers. It felt comforting. I appreciate Stephen King for his sympathetic characters and plausible relationships. Once again Kingdeftly demonstrates his exceptional talent for characterisation and human interplay. It may now be a little dated but is still worth a look. Don't be put off by the last review. If you can see past King's title of "Horror" writer (he is worthy of much more) then you will appreciate this.

I remember when this show came out. It was originally advertised as a mini-series. At the end of the last episode it said "To Be Continued" to the dismay of all the people who had watched the whole boring beyond words thing. It ended as it was supposed to, so yes, you can blame the series for having no ending. The plan was for there to be another obviously if ratings had been higher, but it was a boring show that way too long, and annoyed people by not ending when it said it would, so they never made any more. Quite a few of the comments blame its cancellation and lack of ending on the viewing public, when the truth is that for this show that is not the case, it ended the way it was actually planned to end, it is just a lousy ending.

DVD version: A SciFi movie with a truly original premise and glimpses of real people.I've not really enjoyed a Stephen King horror movie since Firestarter. Just so you know my bias I like Stephen King horror books but not his horror movies. I do enjoy his non-horror films. Misery, The Shawshank Redemption, Dolores Claiborne, Apt Pupil, The Green Mile, and Dead Zone (both TV show and movie).Golden Years is on the slow side, as is to some extent every movie I listed above. Golden Years succeeds like the above movies when it explorers characters in ways we are not used to exploring them.Golden Years is about relationships, about the love and relationship of an elderly couple. Rarely in any movie or book do we see two characters this rich a history and depth of love. The action in Golden Years is not a lab experiment gone wrong, it is about the world of two people suddenly shaken to its foundation as they both come to realize that they have no control over their future. Golden Years is the story about the fear of leaving someone behind and the story of being afraid of being left behind.The movie works well when the characters are connecting, unfortunatly not all the characters connect well. All in all there is much to be admired here. All in all this is simply a made for TV mini-series of the type often slapped together in the 80s-early 90s.Both the TV version and Video version are greatly flawed due to rather odd editing choices. The ending of all three versions is still a bit weak, due I suspect to the last two episodes being written by Josef Anderson. The old age makeup for the lead character Harlen Williams leaves a lot to be desired and is often just plain distracting.I am saddened that Stephen King feels he doesn't have anything to write about any more. Golden Years deserves to have many of its ideas fully realized in a novel.

I love Stephen Kings work and the book was great but I was very disappointed when I bought this movie on DVD. This was one of the worst B-movies I have ever seen. It feels like they had a tight schedule and only took one shot at every scene even if it turned out to be a bad one. And where did they find the actors.