Title brought to you by Pacman
So, let's get this out of the way nice an early shall we? I know that Mystery Science theater 3000 did a show on this movie, in fact the cover of the movie has quotes from the episode. Now, to protect the integrity of this review I have NOT watched the MST3k episode before writing this. Any similarities between my review and the MST3k episode are pure coincidence. That done, lets get on
with it.
So as the movie begins we're given a back story about how earth was over populated so it built a colony ship named the Southern Sun, the galaxy's first space catamaran, and booted some migrants into space to go settle another planet.
NERD TALK AHEAD
There are a few major problems with this little back story, the first being the amount of time the ship as existed. The back story says 13 generations, which if we estimate the generation at about 50 years (assuming longer life and later procreation in the future), is about 640 years. Now, my question is, if you can some how completely sustain yourselves in the bleak emptiness of space for over half a millenia, why in god's name do you need a planet? Secondly, if we do the math out again we find that the ship has to be going slower then 1.5% the speed of light,
or about 10 million miles an hour. Now, the fastest thing we've ever created was the Helios Probe, at about .0002c or .02% the speed of light. We can assume that, even with massive engines,limitless fuel,and magic future technology, this giant ship can only be going something like maybe .05% of the speed of light. This means that it will take the Southern Sun something like FIFTY THOUSAND YEARS to reach it's destination.
If all the above nerd talk lost you or you were just to lazy to read, allow me to summerize. These migrants are on a ship that was sustained them for something like 700 years with no problem. They
are heading toward a planet that is 50,000 years away with the intent of colonizing it. The question here is IF YOU CAN CREATE SELF SUFFICENT SPACESHIPS WHY THE FUCK DO YOU NEED TO TRAVEL 50 MILLENIA TO SOME DISTANT PLANET?! BUILD A GOD DAMN SPACE STATION!
*ahem* Anyways, moving on. The announcer tells us that, while most people on this eternal voyage to nowhere are content to live and die in the belly of a rusty frigate some are restless and impatient.
Slickhair Mcgigglepuss arises from fog machine storage
It's here that we're introduced to the main villain, who's name is stupid and hard to spell. As such I shall dub him Slickhair Mcgigglepuss, because immasculating a fictional character makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. Slickhair is always accompanied by his body guard, a man who has and deserves no name. The body guard is dressed in red foam armor but wears no shirt because, well, he's an idiot. Turns out that Slickhair is a rebel and is intent on blowing up parts of the space craft that he's currently on. He does this using what looks like about half a pound of cookie dough and an electric razor.
As deadly as it is delicious
Now, I'm going to have to take a moment to point out everything wrong in just this one shot here.
First, wasn't it a little stupid to design a military uniform with the "SS" patch? They look like Trekie Neo-nazi's. I mean, why is it called the "Southern Sun" to begin with? There's no "south" in space and it's certainly not a sun. Second, whats with the dichotomy between the military uniform and the show girl suit in back? It's like they couldn't decide between realistic, unisex uniform or skimpy slut suit and just decided to mix in both. Third, is the woman with Poofy hair straddling two chairs in this shot? I swear as we pan around her it seems like she is.
Moving on, it seems that a shuttle with some aliens is coming to dock on the Southren Sun. We'll ignore the burning questions like, "where did these ships come from" and,"Aren't we in the middle of unexplored space, hundreds of years from civilization" and "why am I still watching this" for the moment because it seems that pirates from...somewhere... are attacking! Yes, it seems that the shuttle's escorts, ships with the ridiculous name of "stingray vipers", must now duel it out with other generic starwars rip offs. Not surprisingly the fish snakes win and our main charcter, David Ryder, flies in for landing. It is at this very moment that Slickhair sets off his bombs, causing Ryder to crash. Through the use of a Deus ex machina (which is never mentioned again, except to cheaply write it off in one sentence) Ryder escapes but his passenger, a professor, perishes in the crash and resulting explosion.
Professor no! Now we'll never get off this island.
Some unimportant things happen, Slickhair giggles manically every 3 seconds and his partner, a man I swear is just him again with different hair, is introduced.
BFFs or twins?
Slickhair's cohort, who I shall call Commander Gimpy, gets into a heated debate with a bunch of random guys at a card table and declares that they can land the ship but that doing do would "Break the law of the universe, the law of the galaxy." Now, exactly what universal law is landing a spaceship going to break? Surely the mutiny is going to break a few laws but since when do we call our laws "The law of the universe"? Will they some how be breaking the laws of physics to land the ship? That would be pretty impressive. Well we never figure out what laws he's talking about because Gimpy goes straight from political debate into impaling people with his cane.
Take my handicap spot will you?!
After wandering around the ship for hours Slappy Nosleves, I mean David Ryder finally makes it to the bridge.
Not even space age fabrics can contain these guns
It is also now that we're shown that the aliens, who are basically just space strippers, apperently make use of 12 dollar plasma orbs to control the minds of others.
All hail the power of electrified gas!
As Ryder is explaining why he failed so miserably the captain's daughter wanders in and begins to bad mouth him. Ryder, apperently off his meds, snaps and screams before storming out like a jilted 14 year old girl. The captian responds by shaking his head in disgust.
Commander Santa is very disappointed
In the meantime a gender confused engineer reports to the bridge, specifically to miss poofy hair from earlier, that there is a frankly stupid amount of explosives just laying around in the engine room. Unfortunately Slickhair McGigglepuss is also listening in and sets out with a group of guards to silence the man. Slickhair laughs, the engineer is chased around and eventually hurled off a catwalk, beginning a trend of fall related deaths that shall continue throughout the movie. Next we find ourselves in the green house.
...
That is not a green house. Let me rewind to make sure they said green house, not mini golf. Yeah, yeah they said it. They honestly expect us to look at this...thing, this collection of obviously potted plants, astroturf and unidentified machinery, and say to ourselves "yeah, thats totally a green house". I'm sorry movie, but no; I can not suspend by disbelief that much. In fact, it's not a matter of suspending my disbelief its a matter of hanging my disbelief by the neck until it breathes it's last. It doesn't even look like the plants are real, it's like some sort of strange museum display about fake landscaping.
So Ryder enters this forest of lies and begins to argue with the captain's daughter (Who's name is leia by the way). The argument can basically be summed up as leia saying two words before ryder screams "I don't need this" and turns to leave, only to be stopped for the cycle to continue. This happens something like 4 times before Ryder finally gets the message and leaves. It was in this scene that Ryder displayed his range of emotion, e.g. none. He spent the entire scene, even the parts where he was supposed to be angry, with this face
The adventures of captain bland
Ryder, mentally exhausted after his 15 word argument with leia, decides to retire to a hula-hoop slut bar to drink himself back into a sweet semi-vegetative state.
Hula-hoops, essential clubbing accessory of the distant future.
Unfortunately his plan fails as leia follows him. However, rather then doing the normal, sane, human thing of continuing the argument she decides to dance shamelessly for him, repeatedly bending over and gyrating in his direction.
The lady makes a subtle and convincing argument.
This and the awkward conversation that follows is finally ended when Lady Poofy hair is escorted out of the club by two guys in paintball masks and our intrepid duo decide to follow. Unfortunately they arrive too late as she is assassinated by Slickhair and his shirtless companion before they flee in their modified bumper car. Dolf Laderhosen and Daughter Claus give chase in their own conveniently located abandoned bumper car, hurling laser blasts and shrill screaming nonsense with reckless abandon.
NEEEEOOOOOWWWW
Its seems, however, that they are not shooting at each other, but at clearly visible pyrotechnic containers littered around the track. Perhaps this is just the way of the future, perhaps their methods of conflict resolution are just to advanced for our weak minds. Or perhaps the special effects people were just highly incompetent. Thats not to say that this isn't dangerous. I mean Ryder's bumper car got two whole numbers blasted off during the chase.
Bet you didn't know that lasers doubled as label makers
Slickhair manages to escape and sends his endless waves of disposable goons after our insipid heroes. While our bumbling protagonists run away, hurling dozens of people off catwalks as they go, we skip back to the bridge and HEY WAIT A MINUTE
You're dead lady, you got killed back at the club remember? Slickhair shot you in the ovaries for having 80's hair? Did they just prop the corpse up because no one else wanted her job? Well anyway, Commander Kringle and captain towhead, talk about the effects of the bombing and conclude that the rebels are trying to force the ship into "helveka". Now, I've looked and I can not find a "Helveka" anywhere. Luckily they expand upon that by saying they want to push them into the Corona Borealis specifically. Guess what? The Corona Borealis is at least 46 light years away, fully four times as far away as the planet they're heading for. I'm beginning to think that saying this movie has lots of plot holes is redundant. It's like saying an ocean has lots of water.
Well, once we get past that bit of "We didn't research shit" theater, the Commander and captain speculate on the identity of the bomber, swearing to keep the speculation "Top Classified Secret".
I see...you've photocopied your penis...intriguing.
Back with the Bland Brigade we see that our heroes have somehow wandered into the cryogenics part of the ship. They are greeted by a strange old man who refers to the plastic wrap covered bodies as "a personal collection". Dolf Brickface opts for a hasty retreat but Leia drags him along with the line of "This looks interesting"
Interesting is one way to put it.
Luckily the old man spills the beans on everything thats been going on, including Slickhair Gigglepuss's penchant for torture and making human ice cubes of those who disobey him. With the knowledge of Slickhair's evil fresh in the lump of shoe polish and fingernail clippings Ryder calls a brain the pair run for the door, only to see Slickhair and his cronies charging up the corridor. Luckily they manage to hide in the one place Slickhair and the enforcers would never look: Slightly to the right.
Something tells me that vision tests weren't mandatory for the enforcers.
While Ryder and Leia get away, hurling more people off catwalks as they do, The commander puts on a judge robe and reads about the alien space strippers. He doesn't get past the first paragraph before one of the aliens warps in and, after a long winded speech, does this to him. I'm not sure what it is and we're never told but I'm almost positive it's pointless.
Ewwww her arms are really long and they bend downward. Freaking me out man.
Well apperently the alien instilled some sort of urge to hold meetings because thats exactly what Santa does. At this meeting he names Ryder new flight commander. The part that strikes me as funny about all this is that, directly after promoting him the Commander expresses the hope that Ryder maintains the Southern Sun as a ship of peace. He expresses this hope to a man who has killed a dozen of his fellow man just to get to the meeting. Anyway, the commander makes a speech about how Slickhair is evil and how peace is good and we get somewhat of a montage of clips including a soldier using a set of nun-chucks for absolutely no reason. Slickhair and Gimpy plot and, none too surprisingly, decide that they need to deadify Ryder. Meanwhile the bridge erupts into celebration, as the operators of all the highly sensitive navigation equipment get piss ass drunk.
I'll bet the one in the back, drinking straight from the bottle, is the ship's surgeon.
Seeing the opportunity to shoehorn in a sex scene, Haggis Headcrusher heads off to the greenhouse in search of Leia. He finds her, of course, and the inevitable happens: A close up shot of a valve.
Look at those sexy curves and that hot red paint.
In another foray into utter pointlessness we see the space hookers use their magic to ensnare and knockout two meaningless peons who are instantly replaced and never spoken of again. The reason for this scene? So we can watch scantily clad, distressingly muscular women wave their arms at novelty toys of course.
Honestly, I got nothing.
Several more entirely pointless scenes pass, in which we see the opinions of characters we've never seen before and shall never see again. Eventually the plot shows back up (something I'm not sure I should be happy about) in the form of two giant pirate ships who demand the Southren Sun's surrender. The solution for this seemingly insurmountable problem? Fire two missiles. Thats right, they fire two missles, one for each giant ship, and completely annihilate them. Then what? More drinking of course!
Whooo! I love getting irresponsibly drunk at work! Especially when my performance could mean the difference between life and death for thousands of people! PARTY!
So yeah, after that insanely anti-climatic fight we find ourselves with no one left to beat on except the rebels. Irontesticles the Thick does his part by rallying the troops while Leia helps out by getting kidnapped; Slickhair laughs at the wall and Gimpy leers at anything with a pulse. Slickhair threatens the commander with the death of his daughter, forcing the commander to unleash the unstoppable force of Brick Noneck upon the rebel forces. While he groin punches his way through the terrified guards Slickhair uses the world's slowest laser to drill through leia's teeth.
There's a reason the lightsaber toothpick never caught on.
Leia eventually seduces a guard and uses his stupidity to escape her bonds, just as Ryder breaks in.
I'm not going to tell you what happened here, you figure it out.
More stuff happens, most of it being endless strings of fistfights against the most meek and non-threatening of henchmen since stormtroopers. There are several entirely pointless scenes, like when they steal masks and uniforms only to fail and evade security anyways. We also see that Ryder's laser often changes color.
Oh and Slickhair uses the phrase "Space Bitch" with a straight face. That takes some serious skill. Well things to straight to shit and fighting breaks out all over the place for no real reason, people are falling from catwalks left and right and Gimpy hobbles away to hide, gunning down a half dozen engineers as he does. Dulf Veingrunt gives chase, continuing his habit of pointless and often hilarious screaming as he yells with every shot of his laser uzi. Madness ensues and Gimpy ends up dying in a fire. Yay! Our brave hero lit a disabled man, who was trying to surrender, on fire.
That will teach you to have a different opinion!
Well, as though they weren't ridiculous enough the first time, the bumper cars make a return as Slickhair attempts one final time to take Ryder down. Now, perhaps one of the most hilariously terrible things about this chase is the fact that, in the close up face shots, the cars aren't actually moving. Thats right, the actor is just sitting there, rocking back and forth, acting like he's moving. This won't be so bad if it was just one or two shots but they have dozens of them, almost like they were proud of it. The other funny thing is ryder's yell before he lets his car crash into Slickhair. It's about 3 seconds of prune-face wailing before reverting back to a completely straight and almost bored face and jumping out of the car.
Well, anyways, Slickhair gets burnt up in the fire caused by Ryder's car slamming into Slickhair's car. Beefneck and sugarthighs get married or something and everyone lives happily ever after.Or do they?
So, that was space mutiny in all it's 80's glory. When we look at it, especially at the effects, we have to remember that it was a different time and that they didn't have the fancy pants technology that we do. Hell the entire spaceship ran on DOS. But technical limitations do not excuse some of the more blatant problems the movie suffers from. The acting is uniformly terrible, with the main male lead taking awards for blandness, incorrect emotion use and stupid characterization. It seems that the few decent actors, like the cryogenics guy, are buried beneath wave after wave of cliche and people getting blown off catwalks. Speaking of catwalks, this ship is apparently constructed almost entirely out of concrete and tubes. The entire thing looks like a derelict sewage treatment plant, an ironically good choice, and utterly fails to give off anything resembling a spaceship vibe.
The stank of the 80's is all over this thing; need I remind you of the hula-hoop bar? In the end it seems more like a parody then anything else, some sort of student film about what the 50's thought the 90's would be like. However it can't even manage this because of it's inconsistent flicking from clean white corridors and chrome clothing to dilapidated warehouses and men in paintball masks. In the end it's nothing but a screaming wad of hopeless nothingness which leaves you with a resolutely sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. I've wasted several hours on this thing already and I don't intend to waste anymore.
Zombie honeymoon is next.
Final tally:
falling deaths:23
incomprehensible screams:12
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Topic: Piecewise's Heavily illustrated bad movie reviews: Karate Cops Review (finally) (Read 35151 times)