I have great memories from the early to mid-eighties of my dad taking me to our little hometown theater to see anything remotely kid friendly, mostly fantasy or sci-fi films, stuff like Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, Flash Gordon and Conan the Destroyer. I have great affection for these sub-par films because of the good memories attached to them. The Ice Pirates was one of those films, and I've revisited it quite a few times over the years, but it had been at least 10 years since I'd seen it. I wasn't sure it would hold up.
What I didn't realize the last time I saw it was how damn funny it is. As a kid I saw it as a fun swashbuckling, space adventure, which it still is, but I didn't get half the jokes till now. It's a great spoof of Star Wars and pirate films, while having its own unique spirit and remaining a fully cohesive film. You genuinely care for these characters as they fight the good fight against the evil conglomerate-Empire that holds the Universe's limited water supply hostage.
There's Jason, the ship's Captain and womanizer, not necessarily in that order; played with great pizazz by Robert Urich. His sidekick and second in command is Roscoe, who's an expert in robotics, they have a great comedic chemistry together. Princess Karina, is your typical damsel in distress, but she's not too annoying. Two of the ship's crew are filled out by some actors who went on to much bigger and better things, Ron Perlman and Anjelica Huston, and the film feels that much better for their involvement. The whole cast is really great, they don't treat the film like a lark, their dedication to their characters makes the film feel better than it is.
The film has quite a few inspired moments; just a few minutes into the film, there's a hilarious scene where robots fight kung fu style. The one that scarred me for life, is where Jason and Roscoe have been captured and are about to get their balls cut off, to be turned into unich-slaves, they float down a conveyor belt, getting their clothes cut off along the way, when a large metal mouth drops down at crotch level and is about to bite off their junk, before their saved at the last second. Even at a very young age it freaked me out, and I remembered it for years. Another classic scene towards the end of the film, happens when the ship goes through a time-warp and everybody starts aging rapidly. By the end, the pirates are all fighting with long gray beards and Jason's grown son comes to save the day.
The Ice Pirates, might be a bit too cheesy for today's average viewer, but those with an appreciation for fine cheese should really enjoy this film. Despite the low budget 80's special effects, the space travel stuff holds up pretty well. The robots are obviously just guys in suits, but they're fun to watch, as they give them a lot of personality. The characters are all pretty memorable, while the story is classic good-guy underdogs vs. all-powerful bad-guy stuff. I think that the young ones would really enjoy the film as well. A very fun, forgotten 80's cult-classic. - Grade: B+ (Seen on 7/6/08)
9/25/08
Labels: 1984, Anjelica Huston, comedy, Grade B, John Matuszak, Review, Robert Urich, Ron Perlman, Stewart Raffill, The Ice Pirates, trailer
2/9/08
Labels: 2004, comic book, Directors Cut, Guillermo del Toro, Hellboy, John Hurt, Pan's Labyrinth, Ron Perlman, sci-fi, Selma Blair
I saw this film in the theater back in 2004 and enjoyed it, but didn’t love it. Some of it was to ridiculous, the ending in particular, and it never seemed to fully gel to make a fully compelling film. I never thought much about it after that, though every once and a while I kept thinking I should revisit it, since it was now from the “visionary mind” of Guillermo del Toro, who was relatively unknown then. That urge caught up to me when I saw the trailer for Hellboy 2: Golden Army; I decided to watch the directors cut of the film, hoping that it might be a more rounded film.
Ron Perlman is perfectly cast as Hellboy, he’s got a great sarcastic sense of humor, mixed with a slight bit of melancholy brought on by his being an outcast, but also an urge to perform his duty as a dispatcher of other-worldly things, because he’s the only one with the strength to face them. While his outside looks monster-ish, inside he’s human, thanks to his upbringing by Professor Bruttenholm, who found him at the site of a Nazi experiment with alternate dimensions. When the Nazi, who lead the experiment and was ultimately sucked into the void, returns to earth with the intention of recreating the world in his twisted image, it’s up to Hellboy and his team of misfits to save it.
Joining him are Abe Sapien, some kind of aqua-man, who doesn’t offer up much in the way of strength, but makes up for it in eternal-fishy genius; and Liz Sherman, played a bit too dour by Selma Blair, who has the power of flame. She’s also the love of Hellboy’s life, as the only girl to ever look at him without disgust. There’s a great scene where Hellboy escapes the lab, after being put in detention, to chase Liz into the world on a date with their new FBI keeper. Hellboy and the others chase down doggy-demons and undead-Nazi’s through a variety of subterranean locations, before Hellboy singly battles a colossus-demonic-cephalopod.
The thing that I liked most about Hellboy is his sarcastic sense of humor that he retains while everything is falling to pieces around him; he’s sort of Hell’s version of Han Solo, with the complaints disguised as quick wit, under the face of danger. The stony-red make-up that they’ve wrapped Ron Perlman in, grows on you through the course of the film, from absurd to a fully grown character by the end. Some of the computer effects are laughably bad, but for the most part, del Toro has created another wonderfully weird movie world. I’m now much more anxious to see the sequel, hopefully they retain the good parts, lose some of the bad, now that they have the slightly awkward origin story out of the way; and not make the mistake of going overboard on the bad guys, like so many comic book films unfortunately do; remain focused on Hellboy, he is the lovable star of the show.
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at 10:39 AM Posted by Ross Williams
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