Thursday, October 26, 2006

Who doesn't love a sci-fi double feature?

Calm down, though. It's not like we're talking "Flash Gordon" and "Starship Troopers." (Although that would be awesome, no question.)

No, as luck would have it, I managed to experience a couple of science fiction classics recently. One a bonafide classic, the other a classic because, well, it sucked eggs at legendary levels.

And you thought Bruce Campbell made those words up: "The Day the Earth Stood Still"

It had been so long since I had seen this gem made way back in 1951 that I couldn't remember if I ever saw the ending. Didn't matter, though, because this movie -- even with the flying pie pan and rubber robot costume -- holds up well in the 21st century.

Our story has the entire planet monitoring a UFO that eventually touches down in Washington, D.C. As the world waits, a giant silver robot emerges, followed by a regular sized guy wearing a round helmet. In classic hostile human fashion, a jumpy solider shoots the guy, briefly spurring the robot to zap a few soliders' guns. Fortunately, the injured man shuts the robot down and is taken to a hospital.

We learn the alien man is Klaatu, and his big buddy is Gort. Klaatu has an important message to share with all of Earth, but our silly Cold War politics prevent a global summit. So Klaatu sneaks away, hangs out in a boarding house -- befriending a woman and her boy -- and finds his way to a scientist with the help of that spunky lad. Meanwhile, the government threatens to close in. Will Klaatu convene the best minds of our day before being captured? Can he keep Gort on a leash? Will he squeeze in a quickie with that single mom before heading back to the stars? Questions ... many questions.

Starting with the novelty of a Cold War, much about "Day" is hopelessly dated. Yet the theme of stupid humans beating on each other for no good reason, and the chance that more intelligent beings are watching and shaking their heads, still endures. The movie also is just a great snapshot of the paranoia of the era.

In addition, there's a great performance by Michael Rennie as Klaatu. Can't say I've seen him in anything else, but he brings the right air of above-it-all intelligence to the alien role. When he says stuff like "I merely tell you the future of your planet is at stake" and "It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder," it's pretty convincing and not at all grandiose. That's not easy to pull off. All in all, a classic worth seeing.

Fortunately, no couches were jumped during the filming of this "movie": "Battlefield Earth"

When I logged on to the blog tonight, I saw that the number of posts is approaching 300. So forgive me if I forget whether I ever posted my thoughts on this John Travolta travesty after an earlier viewing. I knew I had seen it before, but it's entirely possible that I erased the memory from my mind.

Strike that. I fully recalled how silly this sci-fi mess was and thought it would be just as laughably bad the second time around. That's not the worse idea I've had, but thinking that Alison Levy would actually go out with me in college was genius by comparison.

We open with Earth in the year 3000, when a handful of humans live like savages far from the cities. That's because, as we learn, the planet has been conquered by aliens called Psychlos, who are tall, have big foreheads and pointy eyebrows, wear a lot of leather and are generally unsavory folk. You know, like Goths, only less scary. (Yeah, really.)

As lumbering and bumbling as they are, the Psychlos, we're led to believe, have taken over the planet to plunder its gold and other valuable resources. One supposedly shrewd Psychlo, Terl (yep, Travolta) decides to capture some humans -- "man-animals" -- and put them to work mining gold. Unbeknownst to him, man-animal Jonnie Goodboy Tyler is a sly one, and the Psychlos make the mistake of educating him even more, well-positioning Jonnie to lead a revolt.

Jonnie is played by Barry Pepper, who actually can be good -- he was Roger Maris in 61*. Otherwise, we get Forest "Dear God, what have I done?" Whitaker as Travolta's Psychlo sidekick and a host of relative unknowns as everyone else. Gee, were Streep and Nicholson busy?

In short, everything you've heard about this is true, from the unbearable dialogue to the unacceptable lapse in logic, i.e. fighter jets unused for 1,000 years able to fly just like that. Like I said, it's amusing the first time around, like any hopeless mess. But learn from my mistake and don't think this could be some kind of cult classic. Instead, let's more down the list of stinkers and find something new. "Hello, Netflix? Get me 'The Adventures of Pluto Nash,' stat!"

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home