Galaxina

Low budget "Barbarella" knock-off manages to be watchable, but is nowhere as funny as it thinks it is. Dorothy Stratten plays the sexy robot Galaxina on a ship of space intergalactic cops patrolling the universe. While the crew is asleep, Galaxina reprograms herself to be more human. Romantic entanglements ensure. Later their ship is sent to recover a mysterious crystal on a planet that resembles the old west, which is a goofily entertaining of genre mash-up. The film mostly wants to operate as a sci-fi spoof of "Star Trek," "Alien," any number of other films in the vein of Mel Brooks, but it's nowhere as clever as Brooks or a Zucker/Abrams/Zucker parody film. Also, the film suffers from being too overt of a sex comedy, which worked much better in "Barbarella," where director Roger Vadim kept the film sexy but also somewhat innocent, where in "Galaxina" it just feels leering and creepy. Despite it's many deficiencies, Stratten demonstrates real star power in a ridiculous film, much like Jane Fonda in "Barbarella," and as bad as this film is, it did make me wish Stratten had gotten to make more films.

Well, I finally got around to watching this flick, having bought it some months ago for 50p on DVD after reading some good things about it on a forum (possibly from Sic Coyote, I know his review is around here somewhere).

I think I laughed about 3 times throughout the film's 90 minutes running time. The opening line of the captain's log is a true corker, but this remains the highlight of the movie.

The film remains notable for the presence of Dorothy Stratten in the title role, and even though she has relatively little to do, she does a fine job. Also present are veteran John Carpenter cinematographer Dean Cundey (who's work is seen in it's full 2.35:1 ratio on this DVD, surprising for a half a quid disc) and FX master Chris Walas, who you'd have a hard time believing went on to do the wonderful effects on Gremlins and The Fly after seeing this.

All in all, not the worst film I've ever seen, but far from the best.

Many people are devastated after seeing this movie, saying: how can something be so terribly un-funny? The reason for this total disaster is simple: if you want to do a science fiction parody, you have to understand the rules by which the genre works. John Carpenter did a brilliant comedy with a budget even lower than Galaxina, "Dark Star". He was familiar with the rules of the genre, that's why it worked. "Galaxy Quest" had a few hilariously funny scenes, because the movie was referring to all the cliches of SF. The people who are responsible for Galaxina obviously had no real love for the genre, it was just a futuristic setting but no substance and no concept, thus the movie became entirely empty. Empty of anything: acting, story, fun, thrill... Avoid this void.

... what a porn movie would look like if you took out the sex and just left in the bad dialog, cheap sets and bad acting, you would have Galaxina.

This film came out when the Original Star Wars proved there was a market for Science Fiction. This in turn lead to some gems such as Alien and a revitalized Star Trek. Unfortunately, it also led to some bad movies, and this was obviously one of them. (I say obviously, because I hadn't even heard of this film until a few days ago.I missed it when it came out in 1980.)

Here's the underlying problem. Dorothy Stratton couldn't act, so for most of the movie, they didn't even let her try. I understand her tragic death has given this film an undeserved cult status, but for the life of me I can't understand why.

Clearly, the movie tried to Spoof Star Wars, Star Trek and Aliens, but they clearly don't understand than when you spoof something, it has to be FUNNY! This movie wasn't, or at least, the comic timing on jokes that could have been funny weren't. Science Fiction is ripe for parody, as Spaceballs and Galaxy Quest proved. This movie, however, did it poorly.

Dorothy Stratten is the only reason to watch this unfunny sci-fi spoof, and her appearance is a disappointment. Though she has the title role, her screentime is limited, and she only speaks a few lines of dialogue. If you're not a Stratten fan, pass this one up.