| | Parts of this somewhat experimental Disney live-action movie have held up surprisingly well. Many of the special effects--particularly involving the black hole--still look great, and the story is unusually dark for a Disney picture.
Actors Anthony Perkins and Yvette Mimieux (quite aged since her 1960 appearance as the future babe Weena in "The Time Machine"--see entry 1960) are pretty good, but have relatively weak roles, and have to take a back seat to overblown or ham-fisted performances by the other members of their scientific exploration team, some very annoying "cute" big-eyed robots, and the proverbial mad scientist. It is *kind* of fun to watch young Joseph Bottoms careen around as a spunky lieutenant of the old lets-stick-it-to-the-commies mold, but Ernest Borgnine is horrible, and you wonder why they didn't just flush him out into space as he bungles things right and left. I haven't minded Borgnine in most of the things I've seen him in, so it was surprising how aggravating he was here...I suppose it can be partially blamed on the writing ("let's have a smart young science crew exploring space...oh and they have a moronic young punk, a lame old goofus, and a retarded robot with them").
So it's touch and go watching, but if you stick around 'til the end, you'll find yourself caught in one of the trippiest, most what-the-hell-is-happening endings that you'll ever have seen--certainly in a Disney movie, and possibly in any movie that was otherwise lucid for 95% of its play time. Crazy stuff goes on there, and it is not happy-trippy Disney stuff by any means. Wikipedia tells me this was the first non-rated-G Disney production, and I don't know if they've ever really come back to something this out-there that actually carried the "Disney" label. It's kind of worth seeing just for this bizarre, puzzling final part, but not really. |
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