Stephen King’s Golden Years Review

Stephen King's Golden Years
A janitor at a top secret experimental science lab is on his own one night when he is exposed to a new substance that leaves him growing younger instead of older. It's not long before the laboratories want him for testing so he runs away with the scientists on his tale.

by William Thomas |
Published on
Release Date:

01 Jan 1991

Running Time:

236 minutes

Certificate:

NR

Original Title:

Stephen King’s Golden Years

This may not be the best Stephen King movie out on video, but it sure as hell is the longest. An “original” teleplay mostly by the Great Man, this is, for King conoisseurs, tangentally a sequel to Firestarter, and features the Kustomary King Kameo as Stevie stretches his acting talents by playing a bus driver.

A seven-part TV series spliced together into a bladder-abusing four hour feature, this has elderly janitor Keith Szarabajka caught in one of those mysterious explosions in a top secret research facility and, after a brief spell of glowing green, starting to grow young. With a government-sanctioned psychopath on his tail, Szarabajka takes off like The Fugitive, and several hours pass with surprisingly little in the way of plot, the whole epic winding down in a particularly frustating manner with a finale that neither explains nor makes any dramatic use of the hero’s bizarre situation.

Draggily directed, blandly acted and without much in the way of horror, suspense or action, this is strictly for King’s biggest fans and immediate family.

As is so often the way with King movies, they are either great or very poor. Sadly this is another for the 'poor' pile. Whilst the premise is pretty average for King, bar a few pitfalls here and there, the problem is more with the pace and the lack of development once the janitor is on the run.
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