I’ll be honest, as a movie, Knight Rider wasn’t that great but as the set-up for a series, there is potential there. Considering how many technological advancements there have been since the original series aired, there’s a lot that can be done with KITT in a new Knight Rider series. (CinemaBlend)
All of this is fixable, of course, with sharper writing and perhaps even some recasting — personally, I don’t believe the baby-faced Bruening could have survived two minutes in EYE-rack — but unfortunately "Knight Rider" faces that invincible foe: time. As with "Bionic Woman," technology has out-stripped what was once science fiction. For KITT to have resonance in today’s world, the vehicle would have to be equipped for space travel or time travel, read minds or at least have nuclear capabilities. Instead, this car’s big claim to fame is it can change colors. Whoopee. (LA Times)
The GPS in my rental car last Christmas had more personality than Val Kilmer’s drone as the voice of KITT. I swear there were times I detected a yawn as KITT nagged the cocky son-of-Michael Knight, but maybe that was just me. (TV Guide)
Just when you thought that it couldn’t get much worse, though, there were a lame series of Ford Focus commercials featuring Mike Traceur out on a date being followed by a jealous K.I.T.T. These little vignettes put together told a story that was meant to pimp out the Ford Sync system that can voice-activate your songs and read your incoming text messages. We just want to see the look on a parent’s face when their teenager’s car radio system pumps out "WTF LOLZ OMG!" using one of these things. (io9)
NBC didn’t make this movie revival/backdoor pilot available in advance, and on that score its instincts were right. Val Kilmer was a last-minute substitute as the voice of KITT the talking car, and David Hasselhoff has a nostalgic cameo as the original driver, but after that the two hours mostly amount to watching two people that once dated drive around together in a conspicuously product-placed Ford Mustang. And yes, that’s just about as much fun as it sounds. (Variety)
