Solar Crisis
Richard Sarafian, Alan Smithee (same person?)
It will remain a mystery how a film with so many talented actors wound up such a stinkeroo; and why it needed two writers and two directors to do drive it into the ground. Despite bearable special effects and passable music, what the movie lacks in polish it never makes up in story. Apparently, this is what Tim, Charlton, & Co. do on rainy weekends when they can come up with nothing better---charity work.
So, the year is 2050 and the sun is threatening the earth. In fact, the heat has been on for years and vast regions have been turned into deserts. Judging by the ridiculous costumes, one can hardly venture outside without suffering third-degree burns in a minute or so. Well, unless one is a main lead or a an evil minion of the IXL corporation, in which case one is permitted to sport a fancy dress, lie on the cracked ground for hours, easy-ride down the highway, and generally engage in all sorts of biologically objectionable behavior.
Anyway, while all humanity suffers, IXL CEO (the balding Teague) is busily building a vast financial empire the likes of which the world has not seen since the last James Bond movie. That scientists predict a huge solar flare that might wipe out the Earth does not bother him---he simply does not believe in such nonsense! So he sets out to sabotage the mission to the sun, which is supposed to send the talking bomb Freddie to blow up the flare prematurely while it is pointing away from Earth. This expedition is captained by Steve Kelso (Matheson), who has a son Mike (Corin Nemec), and a dad Admiral ``Skeet'' (Heston).
In an unrelated story, Mike escapes from the military academy in order to (a) wander aimlessly through the desert, (b) hitchhike robot trucks, (c) drink stale water with strangers, or (d) join his dad saving the world? In the same story, the doting admiral (???) suddenly leaves the space station, shuttles down to Earth to rescue his young (and quite stupid) grandson. For this purpose he mobilizes every military unit in sight despite logic and procedure. Meanwhile his wayward grandson stumbles across the lunatic Travis (Palance) who takes him to a bar and dies. The boy hitches a ride in a great Corvette with cheesy music blasting through his skull. The driver also meets with untimely and unlikely death, when IXL suits kidnap the boy so that their CEO can reveal his grand scheme before killing him. Of course, he fails, the boy survives and the Admiral saves him but... when he tries to warn the ship about the impending sabotage, the call does not go through and we find THIS WHOLE PART OF THE PLOT HAD NO PURPOSE AT ALL!!!
The sabotage itself is funny, especially because they picked Schofield to play Alex Noffe, the genetically enhanced female from Oxford (the labs, not the university) who is the Trojan Horse (or the Manchurian Candidate). The problem with Schofield is that she is utterly incapable of portraying more than one emotion, so we get love, rage, despair, psychosis, regret, sorrow, heroism, sacrifice, etc. all rolled into one blank stare. Nice body, though. Anyway, she gets programmed by the evil minion Haas to wreak unspecified havoc on the ship, which she does and of course nobody suspects anything until it's almost too late. She trips off when she hand-programs the talking bomb to self-detonate earlier and the talking bomb identifies her as the programmer. Duh! The talking bomb talks, damnit, could the stupid enhanced human figure it out and snuff it? Apparently not. So, she goes in to pilot the kamikaze rocket down to the sun out of her love for Steve. Naturally, this follows from the logically structured storyline. Earth is saved, movie over.
Wonderfully inane, I have it on DVD to all you readers' envy! 2 out of 10 (good music).
January 16, 2000. BLS