“Robot woman like clock: pretty face, pretty hands, pretty movement, but hard to regulate when she get out of order.”

Justin’s rating: Space cowboys, yeehaw

Justin’s review: Galaxina is a hard movie to approach for both a viewing and a review, because what should’ve been a simple retro-themed scifi spoof was overshadowed by the murder of its lead actress Dorothy Stratton very shortly after the film was released in 1980. This tragedy caused the studio to yank Galaxina from the theaters, which certainly didn’t do her legacy any service.

And, as I said, it makes reviewing this a bit tough, because you feel bad if you say anything negative at all, because… yeah. Stratton was hoping that this would be her first breakout hit that would help her move past her days as a Playboy centerfold, and instead it ended up being a strange epitaph.

The year is 3008, space travel is normalized, and movie studios are ripping off the suddenly blossoming scifi genre with not-so-subtle homages to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Dark Star, and Alien. On board the starship Infinity, Captain Butt and his crew are grappling with an emotional robot (Stratton’s Galaxina) as they try to secure a special crystal known as the Blue Star.

There are robots. There are aliens birthed in human bodies. There’s an emotionless Vulcan. There’s a bar full of strange intergalactic creatures. There’s forbidden love and bad space battles and a pompous captain who gets about via forklift. What there isn’t anywhere to be seen… is inspiration.

You do get the feeling that Galaxina was trying to accomplish what Spaceballs would later achieve, albeit doing it with less comedic chops and source material. It doesn’t ever quite get there, probably because the humor here is extremely infantile and the pacing atrociously slow. There are enough familiar sound effects and homages that you will probably nod without smiling and say, “Yeah, I get it. It doesn’t do anything for me, but I get it.”

Because what you don’t want a comedy to do or be — especially when it’s venturing into spoof territory — is lazy. Something that was obviously thrown slapdash together in a few weeks so that someone could make a buck and you could get really bored. This is such, so very much, a lazy movie.

Strangely enough, Galaxina’s style — which was as much in love with ’60s scifi as it was with ’70s — and the parody-anything approach was mixed together and presented much better in Futurama. That’s what this movie should’ve been — and the shot for stardom that Stratton wanted so badly.

Intermission!

• The Star Wars-style crawl!
• Haha “Captain Butt”
• “Joy and yummies.” You can sense the sarcasm.
• The alien workout video
• Why not smoke a cigar as you work out?
• In space, nobody can hear your siren
• The space shuttle and the Batmobile