saxsymbol

As a great fan of cult tongue-in-cheek movies, Westworld was an absolute favourite. But just like the new remake of Robocop and Total Recall, this adaptation takes itself a bit too serious. It questiones artificial intelligence, is well styled and current, but somehow something is missing. A good ducumentary-style realism might have worked to give it the eary atmosphere instead of the sugar-coated Hollywood approach they used. In that respect JJ Abrams always has great ideas, but somehow he always ends up uninventive, rather 'kitchy' and not all the way there. And then there's the rather ridiculous premise that men would pay to have sex with a robot in an expensive theme-park that probably has to charge millions to finance the upkeep of these complicated robots. Just pay a real person for seks! In the distopian future they're portraying here, virtual reality would have been way cheaper, providing the desired result and they wouldn't be meddling with unpredictable A.I. So I had a bit of a problem in the verisimilitude department there as well...

Sure enough Eugene Cernan did a very unique thing...but mainly for himself: Let's be honest: He didn't exactly make headlines the way Armstrong did. Nor did he invent a cure to cancer. Of course space travel has it's romantic side and during 'Last Man on the Moon' there's plenty of impressive footage from the Apollo program (and some less impressive home video's from Cernan's personal collection with endless narration). This documentary however claims to be centered around Cernan, and I expected the same character study as the one I once saw of Neill Armstrong, a recluse who simply couldn't cope with the fame and a very interesting man. Cernan however seemed to have embraced fame a bit too eagerly thus loosing himself in his ego: He still travels across the globe to tell his story to anyone who cares and in my case: to someone who stopped caring halfway the documentary. There was so much 'hero talk' by Cernan himself it became a bit annoying. That's when I just wanted to watch more impressive NASA footage. Alas, I was treated to more Cernan talking and less Cernan 'moonwalking'. Just watch any NASA sponsored IMAX 3D docu and you'll be way more impressed.