Disney's "The Black Hole" captures that moment in Hollywood history when The Walt Disney Company was tumbling in the wake of the major studios like an annoying, tag-along kid brother whining, "Me too! Me Too!". It's hard to believe now, with the Disney media juggernaut having devoured the animation market as well as Miramax and Capital Cities/ABC, but in those pre-Eisner/Katzenberg days, there was a popular joke in Tinseltown that went: Some people work in film, and some people work for Disney. Ahh, but "the Black Hole" comes from a tense period in Disney's history when the studio was till trying to find it's way after Walt's death, still trying to live down all those god-awful Kurt Russel/Joe Flynn movies, and was being run by the man Walt himself appointed as heir to the throne, Ron Miller. At the time, Ron was Walt's son-in-law, a former USC football star, and a future ousted Disney CEO branded with the unaffectionate moniker of "Tron Miller". "The Black Hole" was Disney's attempt to get a piece of the "Star Wars" action. "The Black Hole" follows the adventure of an exploration spcaeship that finds a long-missing space station perched on the rim of a massive black hole that is animated on twos. Upon investigation, the explorers find the station under the command of Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell), seemingly the only human occupant among a ship populated with spooky robots with black robes and mirrored faces. Reinhardt, of course, is a space-going mad scientist, and instantly befriends the exploration crew's resident nutcase, Dr. Alex Durant (played by resident Hollywood nutcase, Anthony Perkins). Of course, Reinhardt has a suicidal scheme to travel into the black hole, and wants the exploration crew's help...whether they want to give it or not. Also along for the ride are several funny robots that serve the purpose of showing the audience how far technology has come in the futuristic world of "The Black Hole". The robots fly instead of walking or rolling, and if that isn't hilarious enough, one of the robots even has ESP! Reinhardt even has his own pet monster (as any self-respecting mad scientist would), in the form of Maximillion, as scary, flying robot that looks a lot like a Transformer and has these unique blender-like attachments that are useful for killing visiting scientists. Maximillion does not speak, and emits an unnerving bass hum for extra spookyness. Rounding out the cast are Robert Forster as the Captain, Joseph Bottoms as his Lieutenant, Yvette Mimieux as the scientist, and Joe Flynn as they befuddled college dean (just kidding!). Of course, the film features a very Dineyesque moral message in which both the bad and good characters go to their just rewards There are some nice special effects (like the glowing meteors bounding through the ship) and some really lame special effects (like Maximillion obviously swinging on a rope to simulate his flying in the path of our heroes), and there are moments of pretentiousness and lame science that make this movie an entertaining snickerfest, if not totally engrossing. All in all, it's a fun movie for anyone with a ten-year-old's attention span but it suffers from the technique that a lot of Disney live-action films of the period did, which is talking down to the kiddies in the audience. Kids know when they are being talked down to, and it never works. However, taken with a grain of salt and looked upon as cheesy pop culture rather than science fiction, "The Black Hole" is fun to watch. It's just bad enough to be good, not so bad as to be unwatchable, and unintentionally funny enough to be entertaining.
Review of The Black Hole
