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Nowadays, there is a tendency to bowdlerize fairy tales, but this movie preserves all the sex, violence, weirdness, and horror of the medium. You will recognize the story elements as they are formed into something new. The King sets a task for prospective suitors for his daughter; a Queen wishes for a child but must first accomplish a weird quest; an old woman wishes to be made young. These three tales overlap and interconnect. Each tale has a flawed King and a flawed female lead character -- Queen, Princess, and an older lower-class woman. Each character makes a fateful decision to pursue certain desires. The photography and design combine for wonderful eye candy. The only reason this is not a "10" rating is the length -- the movie could lose ten minutes or so and be improved.

The late sixties/early seventies was a great time for westerns -- McCabe and Mrs. Miller came out the same year as Wild Rovers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid two years before, and, of course, William Holden was just coming off of The Wild Bunch when he was cast here. Alas, this is not a great western. The first problem is that Blake Edwards seems intent on making a grand spectacle, along the lines of Duel In The Sun or The Big Country, rather than the more introspective westerns that reinvigorated the genre. Note, for instance, that the movie has an overture and an intermission, Hollywood spectacle staples. The photography is spectacular -- sometimes -- but poorly handled. For instance, in the movie's opening shots we see a pair of cowboys beautifully silhouetted against a big sky as they come riding, riding... Riding somewhere for a long time. This underscores the poor editing in this film: make your point and move on, don't just pile shot on shot of the same thing -- but perhaps I'm being too harsh here, as the "restored" version may not be true to Edwards' vision. But it is precisely that vision that is the movie's main flaw: there are numerous plot lines (some of which are never resolved) and the focus on the main characters is lost. Rambling and self-indulgent, this could have been a good western; instead, it gets lost in its own pretentiousness. What should have been a tale about two cowboys and their scheme to rob a bank becomes a steaming mess of plot lines. I find it interesting to compare this film to Edwards' comedy work with Peter Sellers or his ventures into the private detective genre, which are far better written, edited, and directed.

Several people have written reviews of this film that I agree with, so I'm not going to get into detail here. Let me just say: 1)The science was completely bone-headed. Just throwing the words "black hole" and "singularity" and "wormhole" into your script doesn't make for good science; 2)The convoluted plot has umpteen story lines, only one of which is satisfactorily resolved. (Maybe two, if you include the unnecessary Matt Damon nonsense, which could easily have been cut); 3)Really good actors get really stupid lines. McConaughey drawls his way through, Michael Caine is used to bad scripts and takes it in stride, the rest of the cast just looks confused; 4)And just what is this starship crew supposed to discover that will aid the dying Earth (no spoiler, you get this quest right away)? A livable planet where Earth's populace can go once they rediscover technology?; 5) Why, in the name of Time (a concept second only to gravity, or maybe idiocy, in this brightly-colored piece of trash), take three hours to deliver this gibberish when Roger Corman could have wrapped it up in 105 minutes?