Shiffman%SWW-WHITE@MIT-MC.ARPA@sri-unix.UUCP (07/19/84)
From: Hank Shiffman <Shiffman%SWW-WHITE@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Personally, I found TLS to be more than a little bit disappointing.
As with the first time I saw Star Trek I, I walked in expecting to like
the film and spent the next couple of hours trying my damnedest to do
so. It was a losing battle.
The parallels to Star Wars are obvious, at least to me. Young boy
in insignificant backwater town (world) desperately wants to get away
and do something significant. He encounters wise old character (Robert
Preston) who tries to talk him into getting involved in saving the
universe from an ultimate evil which hangs around in a super warship.
At first he balks, but changes his mind when his family and friends are
threatened (yeah, I know they were killed in Star Wars; so it's not a
PERFECT clone). Wise friend is killed by representative of ultimate
evil. Then he goes out and saves the free world from a fate worse than
death. All to some music which could have come out of John Williams
after a particularly sloppy lobotomy.
Some complaints: everybody is just so cute you want to scream. No
personality anywhere; nothing but white bread as far as the eye could
see. No real, believable threats anywhere. It all had to be done using
surprise, with creatures jumping from behind buildings. (Want to see a
good, evil scene? Remember the scene in Star Wars where Vader prepares
to interrogate the Princess with that nasty little machine floating into
the cell behind him? Crash of cell door and soldiers boots crunching
by.) The final space battle was pretty sad, especially the Ultimate
Weapon. Bringing Robert Preston back at the end was a cheap shot,
especially considering the fact that his death was the real motivation
for our hero's deciding to get involved. As a friend of mine pointed
out upon leaving the theatre, it looked more like a television pilot
than a feature film.
Hank Shiffman
Symbolics, Inc.apratt@iuvax.UUCP (08/22/84)
I would like to add something to this excellent review of TLS... The movie gave itself away to me when Robert Preston (playing The Music Man again) was driving the "car", and, for no apparent reason, took off his human mask. It was gratuitous make-up stuff; there was no motivation for the character to do what he did when he did it. That made me realize that the movie was cheaply put together through and through, and it wasn't likely to get any better. Nice graphics, no plot, white bread characters, but boy, that Cray X-MP sure could crank out those frames... -- Allan Pratt iuvax!apratt