2001: A Space Travesty

A bumbling detective is sent to planet Vegan to retrieve the real president of the Unites States of America, whose clone apparently swapped places with him in the White House. Hilarity is supposed to ensue, but sadly…doesn’t.

If you want more laughs from a movie, rent Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY…trust me, it’s funnier. Okay, now let me start by putting down the basics about this flick: it sucks! Please, for the love of God, do not even bother watching the trailer or checking out the video-box of this movie when it eventually hits store shelves nearest you, because you will only be encouraging this kind of insanely awful filmmaking of getting made in the future. For that matter, please take down the names of the director, producers and writer of this crapfest and see that you never have the misfortune of ever seeing anything that any of them has ever, or will ever, be involved with again. Okay, so that’s a little harsh, but I’m sorry folks…I had to sit through this piece of shit and to experience something so truly painful a watch, one has to vent out somewhere. To see dumb jokes fail one after the other, to witness 99% of the so-called “comedy” drain out into nothingness, and to feel utterly embarrassed when a man by the name of Leslie Nielsen mugs for the camera, knowing full well that nothing he is either saying or doing, is even remotely humorous…well, it’s just sad. What’s even sadder is that all of these folks actually believed that this was a project worth making. Of course, it goes without saying that this film has nothing to do with 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and that it barely parodies any other movies either…all it does is establish a lame-ass plotline and throw every stupid, unfunny toilet joke in there to see if it sticks. Needless to say, nothing sticks.

The film’s also too long for its own good, it features a crappy story, an over-the-top score (wa-wa-wooong!), dumb attempts at comedic slapstick, pratfalls galore, lame musical numbers obviously inserted to waste time, bad special effects, outdated uninteresting celebrity impersonations (Madonna, Prince and Hulk Hogan???), a particularly dim-witted & never-ending ending, 10-year old jokes (is “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” still funny to anyone?) and so many unfunny lines, that I couldn’t even begin to remember them all right here (“I got there as fast as a speeding bullet…if you know what I mean.”-now is that funny or what??). And as much as you don’t want to fault an actor like Leslie Nielsen for this atrocity to the world of comedic film, the man simply has to take the blame for a lot of this, because it was surely his “name” that got this project off the ground in the first place. How he could walk through this role, acting exactly like Lt. Frank Drebin of the Police Squad (from the “funny” NAKED GUN movies), complete with the off-screen narration (but without the laughs), is almost as offensive as the amount of money that he was surely paid to perform in this shit-stick. Listen, I love these “stupid” comedy flicks as much as the next guy (I consider AIRPLANE and TOP SECRET among my favorite comedies of all-time), but this piece of gunk is just that. It doesn’t provide any laughs, its idiocy just angers you as it moves along and it sticks plenty of teaser T&A in there for those video rental numbers to increase. Sadly, I’m still a horny man and was turned on by the many g-string ass-shots in the film and even more so, by the lead babe in the movie, one Ophelie Winter, whose hooters are the only reasons that this movie is getting even two points out of the possible ten (Note: there is no nudity in this film…just plenty of teasing!).

This movie has officially been appointed to my all-time shitlist and if this review can change the mind of even one person from ever seeing this movie in their life-time, then I believe that I have truly contributed something worthwhile to society as a whole. Godspeed.

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian