Spaceballs

Rating: 8/10 (21 December 2009)

This is a film (and a rare one) that just about anything you say about it, it's probably valid: good, bad, indifferent. I'm in the latter category. It's interesting that James Cameron abandons what made him a legend—storytelling in Titanic—and dumps just about any and everything from all the rest of his films combined in a 2.75 hour epic.
No denying, visually it's astonishing. And that's not entirely a compliment. I'm kind of a beige fellow, and the color scheme here tends towards the dayglo of a black light. I won't quibble about the choice. Cameron brought us those extraordinary photos of actual creatures from the Marianas Trench, and I guess their lack of color was something he wanted to work against. There are a few moments of delicacy and wonder from the planet Pandora, but otherwise, the camera is flying up and around and down and through the CGI scenery, and the thrill wore off (for me) about an hour into it.
Almost two hours left, and I was discouraged at how paltry the imagination was when the screenplay had to settle down and involve us. I saw one review that compares this experience to what audiences must have felt in 1933 when they saw King Kong. And I agree. But we cared what happened to those stuffed animatronic puppets, here I cared nothing for anyone on the screen. I think the problem is the Na'vi never came to life for me. Their movement was stilted and their, er, belief system was of such a silly New Age goofiness that the young fellow next to me couldn't stop giggling anytime some sort of nonsense was spouted. (I was always taught not to laugh at other people's beliefs, and maintained.)
The last hour is very difficult to sit through since, well, we are at war, and the script is not subtle in comparing the policies of the Bush Administration to the "English" army in this film. Watching what would be U.S. soldiers slaughtered isn't really something I was up for. And as the film closes, I could clearly hear the echo of an Arnold Schwarzenegger intonation, "We'll be back." Giving, in my opinion, Mr. Cameron no moral authority to preach to anyone about how the sins of the military industrial complex rules our politicsfor greed and graft.
I'm not speaking for the rest of sold out audience that I sat with, but there was a discernible pall throughout the theater.