So I have this stack of Sci-Fi original
movies that I literally own. I mean I paid good money
for these things. But every time I reach for one, it's
like I'm on the set of 'Deer Hunter' or something as the fear
I'm about to load the chamber with a crap movie that will
completely waste my time is almost debilitating. But
instead of one in the revolver it's like five in the
revolver. It's almost a bonafide guarantee.
Today's battle with the Russian Roulette that is my DVD player
is 'Savage Planet' and it was awful. But does that mean
we didn't have a good time watching it? No it does not.
Dateline… the future. India and Pakistan have
finally got around to inevitably nuking each other to death,
robbing the future world of M.D.'s and cab drivers, but also
pretty much poisoning the entire planet which is on its last
legs. No worries though because sleazy CEO Mr. Carlson
(Roman Padhora) has just discovered an awesome planet that has
a fauna almost identical to Earth, minus the poison, plus he's
developed a StarGate to ferry a team the 20,000 light years to
be the first to explore this planet for human
consumption.
Actually, Carlson is totally lying about being the first since
he's already sent a team there to check out the planet, a team
that was eaten by giant, super smart bears. Say
what? Yup! Giant, Intergalactic Space Bears!
This awesome team consists of security leader Kane (Sean
Patrick Flannery) and a bunch of other people who will be dead
real soon. Except maybe super pretty, virtually flawless
blonde hottie Allison Carlson (Reagan Pasternak) who will
maintain her superglo lip gloss smackers throughout this
entire picture, no matter what hell these people will go
through.
Our team thinks they are going to check the
planet for living conditions, but problems occur almost
immediately when the last guy through the stargate hits land
without any bones. That's not supposed to happen.
The science dude thinks there might be 'a glitch' in the
system. Sure am glad he's on top of this. Then the
bears attack. Kind of. Not really. We see
though sepia green bear vision of the bears looking at humans,
we hear them growl, then occasionally we get some recycled
NatGeo stock footage of bears rushing or standing on their
hind legs. Get used to this stock footage.
Seriously.
Kane, the security expert, has decided they need to go back
through the bone melting stargate to get home, but alas
Carlson the asshole has rigged it. Seems like this
planet is about to implode and the only thing he really wanted
was the green magic goo that regenerates stuff. We're
not going to get into it. And the truth of the matter is
he probably didn't need to drag all these people to their
deaths just to get this goo on this collapsing planet with the
giant recycled stock footage of intergalactic bears.
Can Kane get the people… uh… himself and the best looking
woman in the cast off this planet before it explodes and
before the detached bear hands swipe at him again?
Probably.
Yes, even though 'Savage Planet' is kind of terrible, we still
kind of liked it. Why is this? One major reason is
that I have terrible taste in movies, but most of you who read
these pages already know this. But digging deeper,
Savage Planet is actually pretty funny. I mean, you have
this expedition across rugged lands and you have to take a
lawyer along. I get that, we need legal representation,
but did they need to take the fattest lawyer they could
find? I'm sure there are intergalactic property law
barristers in the future who work out. And do you think
that future tech will still rely on disc technology to
transfer data? Hell, we don't do this all that much in
the present. Mind you, to get back to earth you need to
put your DNA data disc in the machine, which looked like some
kind of tech that the movie 'The Forbidden Planet' way back in
1954 would be embarrassed to present, but you keep your disk
in your pocket. Obviously future CD's are super scratch
resistant.
But while the stock footage bears did a poor job of selling us
on the legitimacy of this so-called Savage Planet, and we
probably would've preferred poorly designed CGI monsters as
opposed to stock footage, and sure some of the performances
were not exactly Shakespearean in quality, and the awesomeness
of Reagan Pasternak's glowing lips were distracting, we do
have to admit that we were rarely bored while watching this
movie. Because it had a guy get into a knife fight with
a pair of detached bear claws. You don't see that every
day. Because it had a Black guy in the cast that we
thought might survive, until he said he had a wife with two
beautiful kids and how they keep him going. Because
knife fight guy kept kissing his love interest, even though
she had no longer possessed a lower body, which also meant she
had no vagina, which meant he must've really been in love with
her. That was touching.
Admittedly, most sane people will hate this movie. Is
stupid, it blew its entire budget on Sean Patrick Flannery and
little else, and it had special effects that consisted of
stock footage and trees. But we are not sane here at the
FCU. Sanity, we have learned, is over rated.
