This made-for-TV mystery/thriller would be relentlessly silly even without the Magical Omniscient Police Scanner. But with it, "Nightwaves" becomes golden camp.
Ungracefully aging Sherilyn Fenn is a widow who overhears what she thinks is a murder on her dead husband's police scanner, then begins to doubt what she heard once her testimony helps indict a seemingly innocent man.
Fenn, who those of us old enough to remember "Twin Peaks" also remember that little trick she did with her tongue and a maraschino cherry stem, is supposed to be the star here, despite her dowdy housewife looks and the worst pageboy haircut since Cathy Rigby's "Peter Pan."
But in this show she gets totally upstaged by her dead husband's amazing computer. Its LCD monitor is touch-screen in no way that makes sense. Moreover, its police scanner software can somehow pick up cell phone and even landline conversations out of thin air.
Of course, Fenn's character tunes in at exactly the right times to hear things like death threats and murders, all taking place in crystal clarity over these massive speakers that look like "Star Wars" background droids in the jawa van.
And yet, despite this incredible, nonexistent-in-the-real-world technology, it's all wired into an old-school cassette deck, on which she records these conversations. Seriously, does your car even have a cassette deck anymore? Do your kids know what a cassette used to be?
Fenn, who's become every other '80s actress who may as well be Ally Sheedy, does just as good a job here as Ally Sheedy would, and that's not a compliment.
No one else you've ever heard of is in this movie, and none of them you'll ever probably hear of again.
The ending is stupid.
Ungracefully aging Sherilyn Fenn is a widow who overhears what she thinks is a murder on her dead husband's police scanner, then begins to doubt what she heard once her testimony helps indict a seemingly innocent man.
Fenn, who those of us old enough to remember "Twin Peaks" also remember that little trick she did with her tongue and a maraschino cherry stem, is supposed to be the star here, despite her dowdy housewife looks and the worst pageboy haircut since Cathy Rigby's "Peter Pan."
But in this show she gets totally upstaged by her dead husband's amazing computer. Its LCD monitor is touch-screen in no way that makes sense. Moreover, its police scanner software can somehow pick up cell phone and even landline conversations out of thin air.
Of course, Fenn's character tunes in at exactly the right times to hear things like death threats and murders, all taking place in crystal clarity over these massive speakers that look like "Star Wars" background droids in the jawa van.
And yet, despite this incredible, nonexistent-in-the-real-world technology, it's all wired into an old-school cassette deck, on which she records these conversations. Seriously, does your car even have a cassette deck anymore? Do your kids know what a cassette used to be?
Fenn, who's become every other '80s actress who may as well be Ally Sheedy, does just as good a job here as Ally Sheedy would, and that's not a compliment.
No one else you've ever heard of is in this movie, and none of them you'll ever probably hear of again.
The ending is stupid.