I guess there's always going to be some part of us that's going to be a sucker for nostalgia. This film is one of the more obscure kind of nostalgia piece with a dash of social commentary; although it's hard to say if we really need to be socially commentary-ised so heavy handedly.
Here's the trailer:
That snappy dialogue in there? This film is not quite like that.
Oh, obligatory spoiler warning just in case.
What's Good About It
The ironic production design is nice. Yes, once upon a decade there were these shows that seemed to indicate we'd be going out to space with our 1970s decor and furniture intact. Somewhere between Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey' and 'Star Wars was a vision of space living that was production designed by the weirdest furniture catalogue available in the 1970s. The wardrobe and uniforms in this thing are also filled with the sensibility of 1970s air travel more than space travel, but then people didn't have a lot to go on except what NASA had shown us and that was way too bulky.
The buttons light up with incandescent bulbs behind them, the graphics on the screen are decidedly wire-frame and chunky; the fonts and typefaces are meticulously of the 70s and of the genre. The white corridors with he curved edges, combined with the backlit panels and white robots rounds out the look.
The whole thing is cheesy and when it dedicates itself to the style of cheesiness, the film sustains itself nicely. The casting is subtle in that the sound track blares Todd Rundgren and it's his step daughter Liv Tyler on screen playing the main character. Patrick Wilson plays the captain of the station and he carries the baggage of being a Trek universe alumnus. He pays like a careerist space worker who has found himself in a career cul de sac and that works very nicely.
What's Bad About It
If it's a comedy it could've had a few more laughs. As a comedy of manners, it was basically ribbing 1970s cultural mores which is only vaguely funny if you grew up watching comedy from the 1970s, commenting on the 1970s as they were unfolding.
The concerns were pretty unfocused and in many ways naff. The threat turns out to be not as serious and the denouement essentially argues against consumerism. There is no wonder about being in space for any of the characters, so you wonder what the point was in setting it in space except to do the production design gags.
Other people's nostalgia is fun, but mostly because you have no skin in the game,so to speak. I can enjoy the nostalgia of say, 'Boardwalk Empire' or 'Mad Men' precisely because I wasn't there and I can choose to invest myself in any of the characters in the way I choose. The problem with this film for me is that 1970s Science Fiction is something in which I'm really heavily invested. So unless it's going somewhere interesting, it's not going to surprise me. This was unsurprising in the bad way.
But at least there's a cameo by Keir Dullea (a.k.a Dave Bowman).
What's Interesting About It
Just as it is in 'Mad Men', the blatant sexism of the male characters in this little romp are saddled with the kind of male chauvinism that makes you want to crawl in hole. I just happened to catch an episode of M*A*S*H* where this kind of sexism was brought up and of course they were making it out that it was a 1950s sort of problem. It's enough to make you wonder if this sort of stuff has actually been put to rest at all.
The same thing applies with the gay issue. There was plenty of LGBT activism in the 1970s, certainly by 1976. So it seems rather incongruous that the gay character of the future of 1976 is so conflicted about coming out of the closet. It's a year before the debut of the Village People.
All this goes to to show what 1976 was like in pop culture and social norms and concerns is slipping from consciousness. Gender politics in cinema hasn't gotten sharper in the intervening years. They've only become more entrenched and nuanced.
The same thing applies with the gay issue. There was plenty of LGBT activism in the 1970s, certainly by 1976. So it seems rather incongruous that the gay character of the future of 1976 is so conflicted about coming out of the closet. It's a year before the debut of the Village People.
All this goes to to show what 1976 was like in pop culture and social norms and concerns is slipping from consciousness. Gender politics in cinema hasn't gotten sharper in the intervening years. They've only become more entrenched and nuanced.
Boredom In Space
Space was still exciting in the 1970s. The Apollo missions were still going on in the early part, and the next big thing was going to be the Space Shuttle. If that wasn't exciting enough, there were plenty of movies set in space and with any luck it seemed all the kids would grow up and go toward in space. One thing Space wasn't was boring.
In this film, space is so mundane and humdrum, it has been reduced to a place of monotony and boredom. The film's main problem is that these characters are bored with so little to distract them. In that sense it has more in common with Chekhov's plays like 'The Seagull', where characters are always complaining about how boring things are, than say 'Star Wars', which represented the vocational-future-of-choice for most kids of the 1970s.
Space was still exciting in the 1970s. The Apollo missions were still going on in the early part, and the next big thing was going to be the Space Shuttle. If that wasn't exciting enough, there were plenty of movies set in space and with any luck it seemed all the kids would grow up and go toward in space. One thing Space wasn't was boring.
In this film, space is so mundane and humdrum, it has been reduced to a place of monotony and boredom. The film's main problem is that these characters are bored with so little to distract them. In that sense it has more in common with Chekhov's plays like 'The Seagull', where characters are always complaining about how boring things are, than say 'Star Wars', which represented the vocational-future-of-choice for most kids of the 1970s.
It did make me wonder whether we were so over space we just didn't care about space being space any more.
If You Really Must Know
In case you've forgotten what a 1970s Science Fiction TV series really looked like, here's a random episode of 'Space 1999':
Yes, it's got the same damn look but the point is, it's a lot snappier. This one pre-empted 'Star Trek: The Motion Picture' by 3 years, with an episode about the return of the Voyager probe.
To be honest, the title sequence alone has me in stitches with laughter. I mean, just check out the funk wah-pedal guitars in the theme song. Oh yeah, like 1999 was going to be so funky.
It's somehow a lot funnier watching it straight today than the artificial cheese of this new film that's trying to poke fun at it.
To be honest, the title sequence alone has me in stitches with laughter. I mean, just check out the funk wah-pedal guitars in the theme song. Oh yeah, like 1999 was going to be so funky.
It's somehow a lot funnier watching it straight today than the artificial cheese of this new film that's trying to poke fun at it.
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