First off, my apologies for waiting until Wednesday afternoon to write up a movie that aired on Sunday night.

I really did try to get an advance look at NBC’s new 2-hour “Knight Rider” movie, but I was denied. This wasn’t just a case of my not having enough pull: no-one got a look at it beforehand. The stock answer for why screeners weren’t being made available was that the special effects were being worked on right up until the last minute, but, truth be told, someone should’ve spent less time on the effects and more time trying to figure out who this movie was being made for…but I’ll get to that.

So why did I wait so long to watch it? Well, you know how it is: Monday was President’s Day, my wife was off work, my kid was home with us, and, basically, the day got away from me. But you want to know why I didn’t watch it Tuesday, and…well, the truth of the matter is that I was scared.

My wife was battling a case of insomnia on Sunday, and she watched part of it without me; when I asked her how it was, she said, “Not good. The two leads didn’t have any chemistry, and David Hasselhoff is still one of the worst actors ever.” Fair enough…but I didn’t watch the original show for The Hoff. I watched it for The Car. But, still, reports on the flick kept popping up all over the ‘net, and they were all universally awful. More and more, I wondered if it was even going to be possible for me to enjoy this movie that I’d originally excited as hell about watching. After much delay, I finally decided that, as a professional critic, I was quite capable of rising above the opinions of others and could not only still manage to establish my own opinion about this film but, indeed, might possibly find something to like where others could not.

So I watched it.

And, uh…well, I still like The Car. But in the words of Moe Berg, I’m an adult now, and it’s clear that this new “Knight Rider” is not aimed at the person I am today. As I said above, I don’t know who it’s aimed at. It was never a whole lot more than a glorified kids show, anyway, but I guess someone at NBC figured they needed to target this new version at all the kids from the ’80s who are all grown up, because we get a hint of a lesbian liaison and a brief shot of the afterglow of a threesome…which is great in principle, of course, except that pretty much everything else about the show seems designed to impress the same audience who gets excited about new straight-to-DVD features from Steven Seagal.

Oh, wait, that’s me, too.

The difference, though, is that I appreciate Steven Seagal on a so-bad-it’s-good level. “Knight Rider” doesn’t offer that opportunity.

My wife was right about the two leads – Justin Bruening and Deanna Russo – not having much chemistry, but we don’t have to worry about that for almost half the flick, since it takes that long for them to team up. Bruening plays Mike Traceur, a former Army Ranger who’s a gambling fool and a car enthusiast; Russo plays Sarah Graiman, a college professor who lives in the shadow of her more famous father, Charles Graiman (Bruce Davison). It will, I’m sure, come as no shock to you that Mike and Sarah once had a relationship, but when Sarah’s dad is in harm’s way and possibly dead, she learns that Daddy put a contingency plan into place to secure her safety that involves Mike. How does she find out about the plan?

Two words: talking car.

KITT is voiced by Val Kilmer, and he plays the role so deadpan that it could be just about anyone doing the talking…or, in other words, he’s no William Daniels. The flick gets points for the special effects attached to KITT, with nanotechnology allowing the vehicle to change color at will or repair any physical issues like broken glass or dents; ultimately, however, that just means the car’s most interesting feature has nothing to do with the thing that made people so interested in the show in the first place.

Either “Knight Rider” is about as cliched as you can possibly get, or it’s so ridiculous that you’re actually angry at how much better even you could’ve done with the script. The latter is best exemplified with a plot point involving Charles Graiman narrowly avoiding death because he had a body double who was killed instead; that’s ridiculous enough by itself, but then he decides to go back to his house after that! What, like they’re not going to be watching the place to see if his daughter turns up there in the car…?

If you’re wondering, Hasselhoff doesn’t turn up ’til the last five minutes of this 2-hour waste of time, and when he does, it’s basically to confirm that he’s actually Mike’s long-lost dad, that he also used to drive a talking car, and that he could do a lot worse than to follow in his old man’s footsteps. Will we see him again if NBC picks up “Knight Rider” as a regular series? Bet on it. What are the odds of them actually doing such a thing? Well, given that the whole film must’ve been subsidized by Ford, what with all the car commercials, surely they’ve already made more than enough money to make a sequel at the very least.

Am I interested? Absolutely not.