Interplanetary (2008)

I do love my Alien ripoffs. Monsters in space is the ultimate drug and frankly, Interplanetary beats most of them. This is even cooler because of the fact that the movie was obviously made on a budget that wouldnt cover the cost of the food the actors are eating in the original chestburstingscene in Alien. It sets an example for the the alienripoffs to come, that you can make a good movie based on clichés as long as you treat them with respect. And a sense of humour.

The movie is set on Mars where one of those evil, faceless megacorporations has set up a small base, about ten people or so faced with the numbing task of protocol and paragraphs that comes with the territory. Two members of the scienceteam find an alien hand in a cave but one of them is killed by an assassin. The surviving member of the team naturally does the proper thing, that is documenting the find and broadcasting a message to earth, selling the news of the alien to the highest bidder. It doesnt take long before he is killed by an alien lifeform, all while a team of hired killers prepare themselves for killing the people on the base for an unknown reason. Yes, all this and boobs too.

I am fully aware of the fact that my reviews tend to look like this: First a small comment on the movie, then a semifunny plotdescription without spoiling too much of the plot (I hate reviews that break down just about the entire story from finish to end) and then some bits about the directing, acting, sfx etc. All in three decently spaced paragraphs. So, realizing that the first two paragraphs of this is just like it usually is, I will try to break off from this mold.

See? A fourth piece of text. Interplanetary is good stuff. It is very low budget (I havent looked at any of the extras on the dvd yet but it cant be more than your average 70s Dr Who episode) but with a script as fun as this, you gladly forget about the shortcomings and just sit down to enjoy. Most reviews describe it as a mixture of Office space and Alien, and that is a decent explanation. The actors wont win any awards but they do make the comedy in the script work and they most certainly dont bring it down which is more than a shitload of bigger budgeted movies with bigger "talent" (as in I directed a musicvideo - now give me $200 million to shoot a movie with Angelina Jolie) has made. Actually, the movie feels like a lost episode of the original Outer limits, with added boobs and gore. I seriously recommend this to anyone out there that enjoys some decent scifi with monsters. There is still hope for the Alien ripofflovers out there, people like me. Now, let us wish/pray for a sequel. Interplanetarys?

Ha! A fifth paragraph. Gotcha.