Space Station 76

Space Station 76. It's not a bad film, neither is it a good film, nevertheless it is watchable. The film has a reference to Valium and to be fair watching it gives you a feeling that you are on tranquilisers, as the film has a gentle almost tranquil effect from the calming Elevator type music playing in the background, to the slow composed way the actors speak.

I did not find the film to be over humorous, in fact it barely raised a smile but it was addictive. The characters were well developed and interacted well. The sets are well designed and the reference to the seventies makes it seem somewhat timeless. The film played out a little like an afternoon soap opera.

Whether the film will over time develop into a cult film, maybe! Give the film a try as it has its moments.

The idea of spoofing 70s sci-fi TV shows is great, even if it's been done before. (And better, as in "Galaxy Quest.") This has all the right trappings in terms of sets, costumes and soundtrack track choices, as well as a game-enough cast. But where is the script? There are a few half-baked comic ideas here, but few if any of them are developed beyond the level of the verrrrrry mildly amusing, at best. There's less than a SNL skit's worth of actual laughs here. Worse, the characters are mostly irritating, with ideas that are potentially funny (Wilson's Captain being a closet case) and those that really aren't (two sets of bad, oblivious parents) both simply repeating themselves without building toward any big payoff. In fact, what they build toward is a weirdly serious scene at a Christmas party where everyone reveals how much they hate each other, something that might actually be cathartic in a movie that WASN'T aiming to be a comedy. I just don't know what the filmmakers were thinking. It's very strange to go to all this trouble and expense to mount a sci-fi fantasy satire, and seemingly forget to include much in the way of actual humor. No, the humor wasn't too "subtle" for me--deadpan is one thing, but this was just flat and lacking wit. A pity.

I went into this not wanting to watch it - and was left a little perplexed by the dislike for this film; as was my other half. I think part of it could be cultural and us Brits having a different sense of humour to Americans/Canadians (which is where this film has thus far been released).

Frankly, I found this a lot more entertaining than comedies like 'Bad Neighbors', 'This is the End', 'Pineapple Express', 'Hangover'... or basically anything with Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill or Michael Cera - these sort of films generally seem to unimpress me and make the rare list of things I end up turning off. I'm not saying they are terrible films... I'm just saying that *I* think they are terrible utter rubbish 'movies' (or rather, polished turds) that should have never been made. Again; probably my different sense of humour, contrastive to a lot of reviewers here who have echoed similar thoughts about Space Station 76.

Now, Space Station 76 isn't paced to have you laughing at every second - and it is deliberately slow as a film; rather, it's a window into daily life in space coupled with awkward discourse and events amongst the small community on the ship. It's evident this is going to end up as more of a cult movie: it deserves to be.

The sets are wonderfully put together and create a consistent sense of galactic immersion, the acting is brilliant, the cast is filled with a lot of familiar faces from great films and the comedy delivers well. Yes, it might not all be inoffensive - but it's pretty brilliant.

This is a great movie the way it is. Things do get a little dry at either end of the film but it's forgivable.

Unless the viewer is *very* familiar with the 1970s ... the fashions, culture, music, attitudes, behaviors, etc ... much of the impact of this movie will be lost. There are a multitude of references to that era that are presented with such subtlety that they are very easily missed. From the top-loading VCR to the mood ring to Tab soda can to the "I'm OK, you're OK"-speak of the robot shrink to the rainbow color distortion in the telecoms projection, the film is loaded with them. Clearly the production designer, costume designer, and set decorator did their research on the period. That aspect of the film was wonderful. The story line? Not so much.

When I first heard about this movie, I was quite interested in it. I grew up watching those sci-fi movies and TV shows from the 70s, all those leisure suits and haircuts and the wonderfully cheap special effects. Retro is my thing, and anything with punk in it – steampunk, dieselpunk, atompunk – so I was looking forward to seeing Space Station 76.

Now, for the positives: it was well made, well acted (especially from Liv Tyler, Patrick Wilson and young Kylie Rogers), well directed. In addition, it looked like something that could have been made in the Seventies, which was obviously the intention: the computer graphics, the smoking, the Valium, the beige, the videocassettes, the robot therapist (although the exterior space shots and interior zero- gravity scenes looked a little too good – no strings to be seen!).

Where it fell for me was the story. This is *not* a science fiction movie. It may be set in space and the future, with all the expected trappings, but it could just as easily had been set in a suburban street in the Seventies, or in a groovy apartment complex. The plot lines are all very human and Earthbound (and certainly not anything that would have been part of any movie or show from the era): the alcoholic, closeted gay Captain, the lonely little girl who can't keep her pets alive, the bitter couples in the broken, empty relationships where even affairs are just masturbation by proxy, and the infertile Assistant Captain who arrives onboard the station (although everyone keeps calling it a ship) unwittingly brings all the tensions to the surface. There's an asteroid headed for the station, an obvious metaphor for the proverbial lid that's about to blow among them, but it doesn't really play a part in all of this.

I had read the other reviews that warned not to expect Galaxy Quest, Spaceballs, Red Dwarf or other laugh out space comedies, and I'm not some neophyte cinephile unfamiliar with black comedy, but I had expected *some* laughs. I laughed once. More often than not, I was sad, which was more a testament to the performances. Billing this as a comedy, even a black comedy, is misleading.

To be honest, I'm not sure who this might be for: the sci-fi fans will be mostly disappointed, as will the comedy fans, and those looking some adult psychodrama might be confused by the retro-future setting.