I found that this movie actually slows down time. It seemed to take a lot longer to watch than its actual running time. I was impressed in good and bad ways by certain aspects of the movie: good in that it placed a black man in a major and very sympathetic (though ultimately tragic) role, bad in that it was nearly incoherent in every major dramatic moment. The occasional "stirring philosophical monologues" which being in space seems to inspire were truly baffling head- shakers. The most impressive thing of all, and the one I will recall long after the rest of the movie has faded in my memory, was an effect sequence so cheesy that the explosion of a spaceship over one of the moons of mars was emphasized by cutting in a half second of footage of an explosion occurring BETWEEN TWO CARS IN A PARKING LOT. I went back and looked at it very carefully to confirm this. I couldn't help feeling that, like the Russo-American pastiches Voyage to a Prehistoric Planet and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, the model shots might have been swiped from a slightly better film made in another country. The director is also responsible for my all-time favorite sci-fi film, The Wild Wild Planet, which seems to have everything this one lacks, including a Butterfly Dance. I don't think even a Butterfly Dance would make me want to see this, or even a few minutes of this, again.
Review of Assignment: Outer Space
