PANDORUM (2009)

Magpie doesn’t begin to do justice to this End-of-Days/Brave-New-World mash-up from co-writer/director Christian Alvart, a regular burgoo of ‘borrowed’ tropes from Noah’s Arc/Space Frontier stories, all seriously overdue at the DVD library.  Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster wake from hyper-sleep capsules on The Elysium, a huge vessel carting thousands of Earthlings on a long-distance/multi-year trip to colonize a replacement planet.  So where is everybody?  Searching for the control room on this Cruise Liner of a space-ship, Foster gets lost, then waylaid by various survivors and challenged by mysterious monsters.  It’s the ‘pandorum’ virus doing the dirty work, turning people into Cos-Play Zombies.  And should they survive these vicious SPLAT machines, the ship gets locked into oblivion countdown.  The best gag in the pic is how fit everyone looks!*  Those sleep pods work better than Ozempic and a free gym membership.  Meanwhile, back in the dark and grungy ship corridors, our lost brigade pretend they’re remaking THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (different sort of ship) a zillion miles from Earth. (Though a late twist does land them in hot water.)  Meanwhile, Quaid makes like Captain Nemo at the control panel; good guy or bad?  With feral fighting female Antje Traue for Foster to favor when not mourning his apparent widowerhood.  Oh, let’s not forget everyone’s least missed racist ‘80s cliché, the disposable Person-of-Color supporting actor.  Also on display, cut & paste action editing laid on with a trowel so you can’t tell action figure A from action figures B-thru-R, smothered in a propulsive/percussive score goosing up the pace like NFL highlights.  Nonetheless, secret happy ending: the film flopped badly enough to put the kibosh on two planned sequels.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  You wonder how post-millennial audiences handle the mesmerizing slowness of something like 2001/’68 when they’ve been inundated with ADHD speed in their space operas?  That distinctive slowness, one of things that made Kubrick’s masterpiece stand out and play in a believable manner, now hard to imagine getting a positive rating from influencers.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2014/08/2001-space-odyssey-1968.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *One more good joke in here . . . but was it intentional?  You know those Emergency Light Sticks all the hardware stores stock?  You probably keep one in your closet for a power outage?  The ones where you shatter the interior glass tube and it glows with a greenish light?  Turns out, they’re standard issue for space travel two-thousand years on.