★★★
“In space, no-one can hear you copying.”
This very low-fi space-opera comedy is little more than a hodge-podge of elements pulled from various SF of the past sixty years. You can almost tick them off: Barbarella, 2001, Star Wars. But, if I had to pick the major influences, it’d be Red Dwarf, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. There are points where it’s not exactly subtle about it either. At one point, the heroine’s robot sidekick tells her, “The hours are good. I mean, the actual minutes themselves are pretty lousy.” It’s painfully close to plagiarizing a Vogon Guard line from Hitchhiker’s: “The hours are good… But now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy.” Seconds later, we get a “Sector 009 Plural Z Alpha” reference too.
Red Dwarf can be invoked due to the heroine, Mack (Fortuna), who is almost the lowest of the low on board the Space Navy craft: a Senior Sanitation Technician, whose main job is cleaning toilets. Except, through a serious of unfortunate events, she becomes the keeper of the titular gem, embedded in her forehead, making her the hottest property in the universe. The evil Andromeda Hex (Swiburne) wants it, and the power the jewel possesses. Space Pirate Rom (Brotz) is the first to get her hands on Mack and the aforementioned sidekick, Spanners (Brotz). But despite the bounty, Rom decides to help Mack figure out her situation. And so begins a galaxy-spanning odyssey, before an ending which… probably makes as much as sense as 2001.
Yet, despite losing points for shameless theft, I enjoyed the reckless stupidity at its heart. Mack is a very sympathetic heroine, who grows into her role as the saviour of the universe, while Andromeda makes for a fine, scenery-chewing villainess, and Rom is, effectively, a bisexual version of Han Solo. Being of Australian origin, it is naturally fairly down-to-earth, shall we say. Those offended by the use of terms such as “space cunts” should probably stay away. This is also not a high-budget production. Though there are times where the effects are either a) surprisingly decent, or b) cheap in an amusing way, such as the way the screen for the spaceship’s defense systems look like an 8-bit video game system.
It is at its best when doing its own think, rather than aping genre classics. The way in which Mack disposes of Andromeda’s ship is almost brilliant. Though as Spanner deadpans later, “You have a tendency to express things using toilet analogies. I’m fearful it might be symptomatic of a fetish at this point.” The ending, as noted, feels either like they ran out of money, or everyone just got bored with the whole endeavour. Either is plausible. But I ain’t gonna lie: I was more entertained by this than the bloated monstrosity of Dune, at likely a thousand times the budget, and seventy-five minutes longer. Though being a big fan of both Dwarf and Hitchhiker’s certainly helped.
Dir: Daniel Armstrong
Star: Rebecca Fortuna, Whitney Duff, Mitchell Brotz, Danae Swinburne