I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Humour often dates poorly and "The Ice Pirates" is a case in point: the future as an 'extension of the eighties' generates more laughs at the film than with the film. Having not watched the movie when it came out, I couldn't filter it through fond memories, so I was stuck watching, de novo, 90 minutes of goofy slapstick and silly, predictable gags. Given what they have to work with, the acting is OK (they all seem to be having fun in the roles). If the Academy ever does a tribute to Angelica Huston, I hope they include some of the iconic images of her in her space pirate outfit

There is so much wrong with this film, make 3 years before "Space Balls". Angelica Huston probably wanted to buy up and burn all the copies! Water not oxygen is such a scarce commodity and "The Templars" have a virtual monopoly on it. The Ice Pirates are a rag-tag band of water thieves. There are the usual cliché cast members including a beautiful princess (Mary Crosby) plus a quest for the 7th planet where water exists in great abundance. Much potty humor. A "castration machine" to turn prisoners into mindless slaves. Reused sets including a recycled matte from "Logan's Run". A bodyless being with Amazonian guards. A silly space herpes monster. Robots that act like The 3 Stooges. A beheading in the Alien Pirate Bar. Minor racist comments. A cheaply-made "Mad Max" desert car chase. Simulated (just lots of moaning) sex. The cheap costumes: pirates, King Arthur chainmail, Vikings, black leather. This started out as a serious film and lost its way. Fairly decent spaceship special effects but shoddy Atari displays. A great cast totally wasted. The time travel climax is very confusing but cleverly done. All the men grow long white beards like Moses. The Space Pirates fight the Templars "to the death" with swords and lasers. The hero's baby boy grows up before our eyes and saves-the-day. Then everything returns back to normal? It's tasteless yet occasionally funny, in spite of itself! After all the new "Star Wars" films of late, we need another space spoof. The working title: "Darth Vader Go Home!"

This comic take on space films (and swashbuckler films) did have potential - it had a significant budget, as well as a capable cast. However, I have to confess that I found the end results to be somewhat disappointing. Oh, there is some good production design here and there, and there are a few chuckles generated, the most coming from the wacky space warp climax. But for the most part, the movie is a mess. It seems to be making things up as it goes along instead of having a clear vision (comic or otherwise) from the start. And for the most part, it is acted and directed in a way that seems to be screaming, "Ha ha, aren't we clever?" - which gets tiresome really fast. Because of this, I didn't really care for the characters despite the cast giving gung ho performances. Evidence for how this movie should have been done can be seen with the Mel Brooks movie "Spaceballs". Yes, that movie was very goofy, but it was made with a clear vision throughout and had likable characters.

I never actually saw a film that was so bad it was good until I saw this one. It really cranks the ridiculousness up to 11! The movie is for the most part a giant Star Wars ripoff: they just copied the whole bloody concept, the 'used universe' art style, the bleeping robots, the scoundrels, the princess, the evil wizards/empire...Then they try to combine this with idiotic comedy and believe me you will laugh, not at the jokes but at the over the top nonsensical lunacy they call a film. Other scifi also gets ripped off: the chestburster from Alien is here called 'space herpe'. Ad also some 'Flash Gordon' spandex scenes, a battle sequence with accelerated aging (they just speed up the frame rate) where they use increasingly more huge wigs to indicate the aging. If you want to ROFL without being even remotely drunk or spaced out, see this. If you combine one of the previous 2 with this movie you even might easily kill yourself.