“You want me to jump again? I’m not gonna jump!”

The Scoop: 2009 NR, Directed by Mark Atkins and starring Antonio Sabto, Jr. and Traci Lords

Tagline: “The classic story that inspired James Cameron’s Avatar!”

Summary Capsule: Avatar, Star Wars and Burroughs, oh my!

Heather’s rating: ZZZZZZZZZZZZztt–*cough* hrrrmm……zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Heather’s review: Given the nature of the site some of you have probably heard of Asylum films. If that name means nothing to you then let me explain: On the top of the movie totem pole, Hollywood is the bird thingy, indie films are the guy’s head the bird thingy has its claws dug into, Troma’s the constipated-looking guy at the bottom and Asylum’s the snake-ish whatsit usually wrapped around someone’s waist or somewhere it can fly under the radar but still be in the totem pole. Everyone clear on that? Great.

Now what Asylum does best is to find an upcoming blockbuster, either rip off the title or plot to some extent for a low budget film of their own, then make sure to have it come out at almost exactly the same time as the blockbuster in order to cash in. Enough money is made that a profit is reaped, and the whole business model happens again in a year or so.

I recently watched Princess of Mars, a movie that sounded just odd enough to be a great choice for the site and turned out be one of these Asylum films. I could describe the whole 90-minute experience with a resounding snore.

After watching the movie twice this is the best plot summary I can come up with: John Carter is a soldier doing something in the desert by himself and gets shot (I’m still waiting for the movie to come back and explain just what happened in that scene anyway). He wakes up to “Army” men dressed in their Cabela’s finest and trying to pass them off as uniforms. They loom over him, saying vague military scienc-ey babble about an experimental technique that is the only way to keep him alive and will also put him on another planet for their own mission, which is never explained.

They do the thing they talk about doing, and John ends up on another planet. He’s found by and befriends a race of militaristic rubberized alien costumes, complete with floppy bits, called the Tharks. They feed him a Babel Worm(tm) so that he can speak everyone’s language. They then proceed to blow up a spaceship to firey bits, and try to kill the survivors which include the Princess Dejah of Mars.

Princess Dur Dur was in the process of taking new caretakers to watch over the big machine that makes air for the planet. She begs Johnto help her out, because hers is the one race that knows how to run the machine that’s keeping everyone alive,  but they are in danger of a more immediate death by the planet’s other, more stabby, race.

I keep saying “planet” because I think it’s supposed to be Mars, but I’m not sure. The movie title says Mars, Princess Beebop is princess of Mars, but one of those army science-y people says it’s actually a Mars-ish planet in Alpha Centauri that has a number attached to the name and oh really this isn’t going to make sense anyway so why am I explaining it?

It probably goes without saying that the film is ungood. Antonio Sabato, Jr. as our lead character brought all the exuberance and realistic delivery that you would expect from someone with that much soap opera in his background. I swear the man never moved any part of his face more than he absolutely had to. Traci Lords as Princess Whatever was no better in spite of all the excitement she’s used to portraying on film. Ba-dum-BUM! If you don’t know what I’m talking about then you probably shouldn’t look it up.

Wardrobe was laughable. I never caught a name or rank for the main Cabela’s army guy so I’ll just refer to him as G.I. Fro. It doesn’t take an expert on army policy to figure out that they don’t let you walk around lookin’ like an extra from Superfly. And as if those floppy rubber alien half-masks weren’t bad enough, the Tharks’ necks looked to be covered with varying layers of coffee grounds. John was an easy dress as they hardly bothered to, and Princess Dejah is wearing what looks to be the first skimpy thing the crew could find in Halloween Express.

I’m made to understand that other people starred in this thing as well, but every time I try to remember anyone else I just can’t get past the hazy film of bored. I was so friggin’ bored watching this. Interesting stuff was supposed to happen sometimes — I think. There was kind of a score that probably swelled at important moments, but not enough to bring my attention to anything at all. IThe dialogue repeated itself and didn’t do sense-making, so much so that I started thinking about laundry. Folks, it is never a good sign if you manage to do something that makes me think of doing laundry.

Intermission!

• James Cameron, as recently as October of last year (2009), directly stated that he drew influence from Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Barsoom series for his film Avatar. John Carter went to Mars, Jake Sully went to Pandora. According to Cameron that’s pretty much where the influence-drawing began and ended. Asylum took A Princess of Mars, made a slapdash movie version, had it come out around the same time as Avatar and then, because of a half-sentence blurb from James Cameron they slapped this on the cover of the DVD: “ The classic story that inspired Jame’s Cameron’s Avatar”. I gotta give them points for mind-knotting convolutedness and sheer gall.
• The special effects were not nearly as bad as I was expecting. There. I said something nice.

Groovy Quotes:

Carter: Food? I’ll eat. I’m hungry. I’ll try it. Doesn’t smell so bad. I’ll give it a shot. Okay. It’s not so bad. I was expecting worse. Not bad at all. Yeah, I’ll take some more.

That is a complete two-minute conversation Mr. Sabato Jr. held all by himself while the silent alien lady brought him a bowl of white stuff that he then proceeded to eat. That conversation took an agonizing two whole minutes, people.

If You Liked This Movie, Try These:

• Avatar
• Ghost of Mars
• Star Wars