Overrated and overhyped

From my favorite movies..

Absolutely Brilliant!

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

There is a person who rated this a 9 and then said they wondered what movie everyone else was watching. I wonder what movie he was watching! This movie is so bad, they sit in a "ship" that is clearly a movie set. The budget on this movie seemed like it was $1000. Horrible story plot, horrible acting, horrible action, horrible ending. I just let it play for an unknown reason. They actually reuse footage in the movie to save on money if that tells you anything. The few scenes on Earth are even worse, it is a repeating loop of a land view, I think, I say think because it is so bad I honestly could not tell if it was land, sea, or air. Horrible coloring, just all around bad movie. If I had scene this in theaters, I would have demanded a refund.

I spotted this in a £1 shop, and figured any movie for £1 is a good deal. How wrong I was.The first scenes of this visual monstrosity contained the worst space battle I have ever seen. The movements of the ships were quite literally worse than those on Red Dwarf, a British sitcom with intentionally bad space animation. This set the scene for the rest of the film.The script was the sort which leaves one torn between writhing in agony and collapsing in side-splitting laughter, and though delivered by the cast to the best of their ability, you've got to ask how on Earth they were persuaded to sign up to this.Dark is an appropriate title - now we all know that an eerie space ship on a dangerous mission is dark on the inside. Alien did dark space ships well. Dark Planet did not. Even with all the lights off the curtains drawn, I struggled to make out who was who, what they were doing, why they were doing it.And to top it all off, the plot is so rotten it could well have been dead for 20 years, and no one told the writers. The predictability is on a par with tossing a two-headed coin and trying to guess the outcome.Awful, awful, awful. I might actually go and ask for my £1 back.

I'm a sucker for space movies, but even before this one started, I knew it would be a bomb because the "Coming Attractions" on this rented video were themselves so awful. I saw this film in a weekend-long adventure in masochism that included "Ghosts of Mars," "In the Dead of Space" and "Trancers.""Dark Planet" is appropriately named: Everything in this film is dark, presumably to save money on sets. Or maybe in the 26th century, people have sharper vision. Or maybe they're trying to save power, like the Albertson's supermarket near my house that has a big sign on the door saying they have turned down the lights to save electricity. Any crew member of the starship Scylla better have night-vision goggles, otherwise they will be stubbing their toes in the subfusc gloom.The special effects for this 1996 film were not just dumbfoundingly amateurish, they were so cartoonish they reminded me of Terry Gilliam's animation style. Alas, Gilliam was not around to give the effects sequences a Pythonesque breath of fresh air. It wouldn't have fit the film but anything would have been an improvement. Add to that the inexplicable plot and you have all the ingredients for a real stinker. Every once in a while the script almost but not quite rises to an engaging level, but then sinks into banal absurdity again.The cast is a mix of well-knowns, lesser-knowns and unknowns. You wonder how the bigger names got suckered into this turkey: Were they hard up for dough? Did they have nothing else to do that weekend? Watch Oxford graduate and Shakespearean actor Michael York in this and one thinks, 'Oh, how the mighty have fallen!' Harley Jane Kozak radiates beauty and intelligence even in this dog of a movie; a look at her disappointing filmography suggests that she has not been well used in Hollywood. Maybe the nickname Harley (apparently from the motorcycle) fools some people into thinking she's a guy or maybe they think she's a Hell's Angel chick. Paul Mercurio seems to speak American most of the time---or else someone else is dubbing his lines---and then every now and then his native Australian slips through. I guess the filmmakers were too sloppy, too cheap or too lazy to re-loop those lines.In conclusion: If you have a yen for a really bad movie some weekend, skip this one and rent something truly memorable, such as 'Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.'

I was fooled by thinking that Michael York's impressive pedigree (Logan's Run, etc.) might make this movie worth watching. Boy, was I wrong! This movie sets a new standard for sci-fi stinkers! In fact, the only reason I sat through all of it was the hope that it might get better at some point. No such luck. I'm keep it brief by saying there is absolutely nothing to like about this film. The plot was weak, the dialog pretentious, and the special effects amateurish. The only good that came out of this particular viewing experience was that in the future I will be sure to read the reviews of a movie prior to being suckered into purchasing it.