The new, big-screen A-Team consists of, from left, Bradley Cooper (Face), Sharlto Copley (Murdock), Liam Neeson (Hannibal) and Quinton Rampage Jackson (B.A.). (Doug Curran/Twentieth Century Fox)I pity the fool who thinks the big-screen version of The A-Team is just going to be a nostalgic joyride in a red-striped van with a bunch of old TV friends. You know Hollywood doesn't work that way.

It's not enough to recapture the goofy pleasures of a television show whose iconic figure, played by Mr. T, was a mohawk-wearing, milk-chugging badass with more bling than Tiffany's. It wouldn't do to simply replicate a cheerful action series built on male camaraderie and lots of explosions, whose ideal viewers were 12-year-old boys. Apparently, you also have to try to appeal to the adults that those 12-year-olds have become.

Two-thirds of the new A-Team movie is fun, macho nonsense like the 1980s show, while the rest is dark and distasteful. When was the last time you saw a popcorn movie that quoted Gandhi to justify its violence?

So, along with the broadly drawn characters, the cartoon violence and the catchphrases, you've got to inject some sex, political commentary and four-letter words. As for that bad dude with the mohawk, he has to suffer from a serious crisis of conscience on top of his comical fear of flying.

As a result, about two-thirds of the new A-Team movie is fun, macho nonsense like the 1980s show, while the other third is dark and distasteful. When was the last time you saw a popcorn movie that presumed to quote Gandhi to justify its violence?

The original series, broadcast on NBC from 1983 to 1987, gave us a quartet of highly skilled Vietnam vets, on the run after being falsely accused of a wartime crime, who devoted themselves to doing good and righting wrongs. The movie updates and inverts their back-story. Now, our four crack commandos are veterans of America's Iraq campaigns, who first teamed up after the 1991 Gulf War. They don't end up on the lam until eight years later, following a stint as part of the Iraq invasion force.

Col. John "Hannibal" Smith (Liam Neeson) and his danger-loving teammates are on the verge of leaving the desert, only to be tempted by a CIA agent (a supremely sleazy Patrick Wilson) into performing a risky covert operation. He wants them to re-enter Baghdad, against military orders, and intercept plates used by Saddam Hussein's associates to print counterfeit U.S. money.

Cue the classic montage, in which smooth charmer "Faceman" Peck (Bradley Cooper), the muscle-bound B.A. Baracus (Quinton "Rampage" Jackson) and that crazy-like-a-fox pilot, "Howling Mad" Murdock (Sharlto Copley), scavenge everything from movie cameras to vehicle airbags in the service of another of Hannibal's wildly intricate plans. They pull off the heist – was there any doubt? – but the plates are immediately snatched by someone else. The A-Team takes the rap and they have to spend the rest of the movie: a) catching the real culprits b) clearing their names, and c) setting up the basis for a sequel.

The silly high spirits of the TV show are alive and kicking in the early scenes. You want cartoon violence? How about a First World War-style aerial dogfight – but with helicopters? Or a battle involving an airborne tank?

You want broad characters? Faceman is a scam artist so slick that he can turn a prison cell into a tanning salon. Murdock, meanwhile, is a lovable loony who favours us with impersonations of Mel Gibson in Braveheart and the Blue Man Group. Copley is the South African actor whose bumbling official was the comic centrepiece of last year's sci-fi sleeper hit District 9. Here, he trades his Afrikaans accent for a Southern U.S. twang, proving that previous performance was no fluke. He's a daft delight.

Baracus, in contrast, is relatively low-key. Perhaps Jackson, a real-life martial-arts fighter, was wary of mimicking Mr. T. Never mind the fool, pity the actor who has to follow in those oversized footsteps. But Neeson isn't shy about channelling some of George Peppard's playful twinkle as the sly Hannibal. (Although Neeson's silver dye job makes him look less like Peppard and more like another '80s TV star, Alan Alda.)

Jessica Biel plays a military officer determined to track down the A-Team. (Doug Curran/Twentieth Century Fox)Writer-director Joe Carnahan (Smokin' Aces) and his co-writers, Brian Bloom and Skip Woods, see to it that the TV show's catchphrases are there, too, although embedded in some spiky adult dialogue. The film also atones for the series' sins by providing a strong female character – Jessica Biel as the team's military nemesis and Face's angry ex-girlfriend – and by making Wilson's bad guy sexist as well.

What we didn't need, though, were the now-obligatory statements about Iraq. The baddies here include a private security firm called Black Forest (read: Blackwater) and there's an awkward scene where Hannibal contemptuously disses them for not being real soldiers. (It feels as if a flashing sign saying "Author's Message," à la Woody Allen, ought to be inserted here.)

Same thing with Baracus, who has chosen a path of nonviolence. He is restored to his old ass-kicking self after a pep talk from Hannibal, in which Gandhi is cited out of context. A movie where characters "fly" a tank and ski down the sides of skyscrapers is hardly the place to resolve moral dilemmas. If we want a message, we can always watch one of Mr. T's old motivational videos about practising racial tolerance and respecting your mama.

The movie's cold splashes of reality spoil our warm nostalgia bath. Then again, Carnahan doesn't seem too anxious to indulge our memories. He holds back Mike Post and Pete Carpenter's jaunty A-Team theme until late in the picture and original Team members Dirk Benedict (Face) and Dwight Schultz (Murdock) don't make their cameo appearances until after the end credits.

In one respect, though, the film honours the series, which in its time was credited with helping to rehabilitate the image of the Vietnam vet. Here, the A-Team's Iraq vets are good soldiers who are used and deceived by the authorities. This has already become a familiar theme in Iraq War movies ( Stop-Loss, The Green Zone) and I'm sure we haven't seen the last of it.

The A-Team opens June 11.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBC News.