Director Roger Vadim possessed one and only one significant talent, which he managed to stretch into a career.......his great appreciation for the hot women he married, translated into visually slobbering over them in his movies.....
As an actual filmmaker, this guy was hopelessly slack and inept. He probably thought elves came out at night and punched the sprocket holes in 35 millimeter film stock.
But he knew enough to let the camera linger on the exposed flesh of his various actress-wives, including Brigitte Bardot and Jane Fonda.......
As we said at the beginning of this post, just the idea of this movie is enough to make you salivate......a comic book space opera with a scantily clad Jane Fonda, armed with a ray gun and an overpowering sexual appetite.......yowza.......
Well.....we all need to calm down. All of what passes for Vadim's creative energy gets entirely used up in the film's legendary opening sequence (the only thing that most people remember about this movie).......once we've ogled Fonda's spectacular legs during her zero gravity striptease, the movie becomes its own Black Hole, sucking the life out of itself......and just plain sucking......
The rest of the film, scripted by Terry Southern and a stuffed clown car of seven other writers, has delusions of being a slyly satiric, sci-fi action-adventure. This tricky genre is so far beyond Roger Vadim's limited skill set, that he and the movie stand literally galaxies apart.
The movie lies there inert, like a barely animated, bizarre fashion magazine photo shoot......decorated with what looks like leftover props from Fellini films and unsold, gunky crap from a Pier I Imports dumpster......
Vadim only wakes up for scenes where he can further strip and humiliate Fonda.......having her clothes chewed off by horror-movie, snapping-teeth dolls and hordes of parakeets......he takes an especially long nap during an endless, unfunny scene between Fonda and David Hemmings as numbskull space rebel (you'll swear this sequence consumes half the film's running time)
As for the rest of it, you only need to keep one eye open for the crazy odds 'n ends that float past you in the film's slow-moving wreckage........Mick Jagger's one time girl-toy Anita Pallenberg as the evil Galactic Queen, with her voice replaced with the instantly familiar throaty purr of British treasure Joan Greenwood.......the generic, vanilla pop music slathered on to the soundtrack, destined to sound out-of-date one week after the movie's release........Fonda toking up from a giant bong filled with a swimming beach boy..("essence of man")........and John Phillip Law as a much-abused blind Angel.......(prompting the film's one immortal line from Fonda, "De-crucify the Angel or I'll melt your face!")
And it's pointless to belabor the film's ludicrous stab at special effects........Vadim confined his special effects expertise to his wife cleavage and taut belly.....beyond that, the effects appear below the level of a typical "Land Of The Lost" episode......
You can chuckle all you want bringing up fond memories of "Barbarella"......but watching it? We strongly advise.....don't do the time warp again......1 star (*)...(and that's strictly for Jane's weightless Gypsy Rose Lee routine....)
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