Barbarella

Kamurai 6/23/2021 3:58:47 PM 8.4

Decent watch, might watch again, but can't recommend unless it's for a Bad Movie Night. I want to like this movie, it really might have been a great movie, once upon a time, but it still would have been a "comedy-whatever" movie, and it's humor is done well. The production value is laughable 50 years later, but even so there are odd choices most likely done for the imagery or comedic effect. It is worth noting the changes in the MPAA over the past 50 years: the movie begins with a "zero g" striptease with tits out and fully nude (I didn't look close enough to determine if the cat got out), and from then on, her tits are pretty much out for about half the run time, sometimes behind plastic or transparent fabric, but the movie is rated PG. I want to like the movie, but it's so bizarre at times, and it's not a personal story for Barbarella it's an assigned mission, so it's hard to be invested in the actual story.

JPV852 12/3/2023 6:55:37 PM 8.4

Got the new Arrow Video 4K release and decided to give this another watch. Still not great but lots of fun to watch and of course Jane Fonda was sexy as hell. Wouldn't mind seeing the novel getting another adaptation, I can see someone like Edgar Wright giving it a shot (perhaps with Ana de Armas in the lead). **3.0/5**

CinemaSerf 6/3/2023 4:40:01 PM 8.4

I can't help but wonder what Jane Fonda might think if she were to look back on this sexy sci-fi nonsense from 50 years ago. It is not alone in being terrible - there were plenty of drug-induced/enhanced films made in the late 60s so as to render this particular effort indeterminable from many others; but the fact that Fonda took on this role as an intergalactic space cadet on the search for "Durand Durand" and his (euphemistic ?) "Positronic Ray" is what is astonishing. The script is dreadful, the props buyer obviously didn't have the budget to stretch beyond paper mâché and bubble-wrap and the synthesised music is only marginally more interesting than that you might have heard in a Soviet lift around the same time. John Philip Law was already in his 30's when he agreed to dress in a large nappy and don some huge angelic wings as "Pygar" and Anita Pallenberg "The Great Tyrant" was pretty much never seen on screen again. It has acquired cult status, but as is usual with most similarly described films - nobody is ever truly sure why...