Entertainment Weekly gives Path to 9-11 a very bad review D+

[RamboLiberal]

I am getting a chuckle that for the 2nd time Condi is played by Penny Johnson Jerald - the evil First Lady Mrs. Palmer on 24. Where's Jack Bauer or President Palmer when you need them.

The first night of The Path to 9/11 blames bin Laden's persistent freedom on the Clinton presidency, portrayed as distracted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal. On the second night, that blame shifts to the Bush administration, where Condoleezza Rice reads the intelligence report saying bin Laden was ''determined to strike in U.S.''...and then ignores it. This unwieldy opus is hamstrung by the very thing ABC is so proud of: using The 9/11 Commission Report as its source and the chairman of the commission, former governor Thomas Kean, as its ''senior consultant.'' The results strain so hard to be objective and evenhanded (see, the Democrats and the Republicans both made mistakes) that they're useless as drama.

It's also difficult to suppress a giggle seeing Rice being played by Penny Johnson Jerald, once an evil First Lady on 24. This is the problem with TV movies that don't sweep you up in their narrative — you get distracted by famous faces playing famous faces. (The guy doing CIA director George Tenet: He's what's-his-name, the dad from The Wonder Years...right, Dan Lauria!) I don't fault these actors — heck, the best scene in five hours is a brief one in which Everybody Loves Raymond's Patricia Heaton (as ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine) condescends magnificently to Keitel (''I think the people here might appreciate it if you could pronounce the name of their country properly'').

The performances are actually wonderful. That they're in the service of presenting a monumental horror so tediously is appalling, really. Grade: D+

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/review/tv/0,6115,1516013_3...