Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning

The trailer already whetted my appetite. But the movie itself is outstanding. If you are a fan of Star Trek, Babylon 5, etc you have probably also thought of some scenes you would like to see. For me this movie comes very close. The CGI effects can only be described as awesome. Every scene breathes the love of the staff for details. Especially the battle scenes are outstanding and give every Star Wars movie a run for its money. The plot is also masterly constructed. The tension builds up in the first twenty minutes or so and reaches several peaks after that. The story has a great tongue-in-cheek attitude. The characters are only slightly exaggerated compared to their respective originals which keeps them from getting on your nerves too fast. Fortunately the actors avoid overacting - which impressed me as this is still a fan movie after all. The only drawback is that the audio is Finish with English sub-titles. But what the heck: Hearing the tone of Pirk's derogatory remarks is compensation enough.

While rating this film I had to consider a few facts: It is a low-budget, do-it-yourself, fan-film. I could pick one of those perspectives and easily give it 10 stars but instead I will try to comment this film in light of any other movie since it really moves beyond those categories.

I saw the trailer but the final movie was not what you might expect from that. Although it's a comedy, the movie takes itself seriously and doesn't take easy shortcuts in doing so with style. It takes time to introduce a bunch of interesting characters. After that the comedy was at it's best when it was driven by these eccentric characters. There were no normal people in this universe.

There are great build-up's, the pacing works out pretty good and the space scenes don't overshadow the storytelling. When the CGI is on focus it's top quality visuals combined with an epic soundtrack. I do like a good space battle and the whole experience made my eyes glare with excitement. The main storyline would've worked without a few anecdote scenes but these scenes were so refreshing that it would have been a shame to receive a studio note to delete them. I welcomed every departure from the stale Hollywood formula with a smile.

Acting was OK at best with a few mild exceptions in the smallest roles. Nothing that distracted from the storytelling. Jari Ahola was brilliant as the Security Chief Karigrandi and the performance of Fukov was great fun.

I did wonder about what was the point of all. The lead character has a rather questionable morality and it felt a bit awkward at times. When the battles started I didn't know who to root for. Everyone suffers for their stupidity and the audience gets their laugh. Maybe the point is that "the universe is fair and we might get what we deserve".

All in all I laughed out loud many times in a movie theater and that doesn't happen often. I cheered and clapped and felt happy to see a movie like this. It is quite exceptional on any scale.

This was not the best Finnish movie ever but it was truly the most entertaining.

No spoilers here :) A very funny and multi-layer film for the fan of science fiction. Nothing like this has ever been made in Finland, and this is bound to put Finland on the sci-fi -map.

Some of the humor is very Finnish, a lot universal :) The structure of the film is nicely thought through and executed, with an ending that left me wondering if there is to be a sequel :) Considering that the actors excluding two or three if I am correct, were all amateurs, friends and volunteer fans, the movie was very skilfully over-acted and cast to the best possible Star Wreck -style. The actors were all charming and sure to win you over. To be noted that this is the 6th Star Wreck film made.

The effects are excellent, the war scenes actually do work in spite of the comedy nature which is never made cliché or a boring repetition, a pitfall of many parodies. Two thumbs-up for the music as well.

Hard to believe that this wasn't made by professionals.

All in all, a well-made full-length feature film.

Must-see for all sci-fi fans!

I just returned from the first tour screening. The place was a small club at the heart of Turku, and built for bands to perform rather than a movie theater, but the mood was great. The crew introduced themselves, and were greeted with the traditional contained cheering.

The movie started with elegant new title design and theme music, quality not one bit shy of a true professional movie. The movie was technically extremely well dome throughout the picture, not just on some money shots with garbage filler as often is the case with such films. Effects are top-notch, and post-processing is as good as DV can ever offer.

Sound mix was good. Sometimes the dialogue got a bit muffled, but the rest of the soundtrack just boomed with POWER! You'll want a good audio set with this one.

The story starts out a bit awkward as was expected, given that the heroes were stranded on the 21st century earth in the last movie. Things smooth out quickly, and the plot gets underway. The story takes twists from absurd to serious and back to absurd, but the plot stays coherent.

The humor is all new, with lots of stuff mixed together. There are the usual low-brow jokes and Adam Sandler acts, then there is Buster Keaton / Harold Lloyd -esque slapstick and rather clever pokes at the various sci-fi franchises, as well as sci-fi in general. There is even a good measure of political satire thrown in. As a whole, the movie is more a black comedy.

The pacing of the movie is really well done. There is no tarrying around, and the interest keeps on. There's no too much happening at the same time either. The balance is well kept.

Acting was the most varied issue. There were few professional actors, even one superstar by local measure (Kari Väänänen), and their performance truly stood out. Quite some of the not-so-professional performances were quite enjoyable. There were no really terrible scenes, at worst the acting was OK.

As many long-awaited movies have got over-hyped and then fallen flat, I had suppressed some of the hopes, but this movie really lives up to (and exceeds) any expectation I've had. The plot is NOT what you'd find in such a movie made in Hollywood; the humor is quite dark at times and silly at others, and the satire stings in every direction. If there was an 'european art movie' with Stuff! Blowing! Up! it would probably look like this movie.

I give it a ****½/*****

Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning is (roughly) the seventh film in a series of Star Trek / science fiction spoof films, following the adventures of the space ship CPP Potkustartti. Released more than ten years after the first Star Wreck film - which was nothing more than a few minutes of simple hand drawn computer animation plus some school boy humour dubbed on top of it - In the Pirkinning is the culmination of the series. More than a five year mission, this film has been "almost ready" since the end of the last millennium, and is now finally shown to a delighted audience.

And what a film it is! It really can be seen that this is a labour of love. While the acting is at time painfully amateurish, and while the plot is a bit too simplistic towards the end, the humour combined with references to Star Trek and Babylon 5 should keep any science fiction TV fan happy for the duration. And even acting can be forgiven when you consider that the actor budget has been a very round number with only one zero.

The English and Swedish subtitles are very well done, particularly the latter one which manages to transfer a significant amount of finer Finnish language nuances. However the Swedish subs were not particularly well timed: Many of the longer lines started too early and disappeared too quickly to read.

The only real gripe I have about this film is the constant swearing. Don't take me wrong, I don't mind a naughty word or even a few. Swearing at appropriate places can be unbelievably funny. But when you swear at an average speed of twice a minute or so, it stops being funny and becomes simply annoying. This has always bugged me in the series, but as the English and Swedish subtitles have been toned down, most of the viewers would neither know nor be bothered.

Why would you want to see In the Pirkinning? To begin with, it may be (and probably is) the most expensive-looking film that has been made without professional funding. However, that's not the point. The film is also funny, well-paced for the most part, and sometimes even witty. It also has good re-watching value. And did I tell you it's free? You can download it from the official Star Wreck web site.

I strongly encourage you to see this film.