Customer Reviews for
Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy
Giggle and bounce
"Barbarella" turns forty years old, the year this is written. If anything, its silliness has just gotten sillier over time.
Fonda herself embodies the biggest of the changes since this movie was made. This stars the old, giggly, pre-feminist, pre-political Fonda, the one willing to strip-tease all the way down to her sweet self during the opening credits. Another set of social changes happened when the Sexual Revolution turned into the AIDS Era. Back then, sex was good fun between grownups. So, in keeping with the times, casual (but not challenging) kinds of nudity appear throughout. This flick stands as close to Buck Rogers as to the current day, so borrows from Buck in the subtlety of acting, complexity of plot, and depth of characters - i.e., not a lot of any of them. The effects show it a pure product of its own time, though: blobby opticals with mattwork that looks naive to today's viewers. Then there's the costuming - imagine Mardi Gras, I mean the part that attentive parents steer their kiddies away from, blocks away, then add a Hollytwood budget. Barbarella's Lucite bra (that must have been uncomfortable) and Duran Duran's ocean-liner outfit stand out, but hardly represent the limit of what appears here.
The movie starts with a cute blonde (the 1968 version of Fonda) luxuriously undressing in a fur-lined spaceship - pink spaceship, if you must know. Let that image set your expectations. Back then, it was daring but campy. Now it looks cheesy and campy, but I mean that in the nicest way.
-- wiredweirdBarbarella: Queen of the Galaxy
Barbarella
Totally awful movie. I can understand why Jane Fonda was so embarassed for years.Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy
From a Galaxy Far, Far Away
I can remember standing in a long line to get in to see this movie back in 1968, the year it was originally released. I was 12 years old, and my dad had dropped off me and my best friend, thinking that we were going to watch another juvenille sci-fi extravaganza, for which I had developed an extreme fondness. It was the dead of winter and there was snow falling, but we perservered, having heard that we would have the opportunity to see Jane Fonda buck naked, and, above all else, we wanted to be the first in our school to lay claim to that dubious achievement. However, the lady in the ticket booth had other ideas. Although we were 12 years old, we looked no older than 9 or 10, which didn't matter anyway, since we needed to be 16 to get into the movie. So, we didn't see "Barbarella", or Jane Fonda's flaunted nudity, and my father had to immediately turn around and make an 18 mile drive back to pick us up in falling snow, with my mom lecturing him, loudly, all the way home about "parental responsibility" and "pornography". And so it was that, 40 years later, give or take, I decided to order "Barbarella" from Amazon and find out what the fuss was all about and why I couldn't get into see this movie back when it first came out.
Well, for starters, there is nudity, for sure, but it's often fleeting and almost demure. There are breasts, a glimpse of buttocks, and...wait...was that what it looked like? Hard to tell and, at this stage, even harder to care. Jane looks good in the title role and she's funny; "Barbarella" may have been the last time that she was allowed to demonstrate any comic ability in a film for almost a decade. Sure, she was sensational in "Klute", perfection in "Julia" and "Coming Home", but she was a lot more fun in "Barbarella".
There's not much plot worth writing about. Barbarella is a sort of agent for the planet Earth, who drifts through the universe correcting wrongs and fighting evildoers. She travels in an outrageous spaceship driven by a computer that talks to her (not unlike HAL in "2001"). The always watchable David Hemmings is on hand as handsome Dildano, with whom she engages in a literal hand-to-hand sex ritual; hirsute Ugo Tognazzi engages her the old-fashioned way, leaving her sated and singing. And John Phillip Law is both blind and blonde as the angel Pygar, who manages to offend the Black Queen (Anita Pallenberg) by rebuffing her sexual advances, proclaiming, "An angel doesn't make love, an angel is love."
It's all very silly and tastefully lewd, on a sophomoric, 60's-era, "Tonight Show" level (and don't get me wrong, I loved Johnny Carson and my dad was the "Tonight Show's" biggest fan). Despite the presence of some very big names of the time, it doesn't add up to much, and a certain degree of tedium creeps in after awhile. Still, the acting is tongue-in-cheek, the sets are wacky and colorful, and there is a sexy innocence about the whole enterprise that strikes me as being very much in context with the times; in that respect, though worlds apart, Antonioni's "Blow Up" has some of that same carefree attitude. Director Roger Vadim (Fonda's then-husband) seems to embrace the spirit of the '60's without ever imbuing his film with much substance.
The quality of this DVD seems variable, for some strange reason. There are scenes where the colors are beautiful and vibrant, and suddenly the scene is transformed into a muddy murk, before the vibrancy just as suddenly returns. It doesn't really interfere with the enjoyment of the film; "Barbarella" is much too slight to be affected by minor color distortions.
Was it worth waiting 40 years to see? For me, the answer is yes, but mainly as a curiosity piece more than anything. It's not great cinema by any means, but it holds a nostalgic place in my mind of a time that is so radically different from the world we're currently living in, as to seem almost inconceivable. "Barbarella" is my own proof that 1968 did, indeed, exist, that it wasn't a beautiful fable where people still had audacious dreams and the courage to pursue their beliefs.Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy
1960s High Camp
Barbarella: Queen of the GalaxyA great period piece that is (unintentionally?) funny. A cross between soft core porn and early Star TrekBarbarella: Queen of the Galaxy
Loved this movie
I have to say I loved this old campy movie. Brought back memories of being in the service. Plus the movie itself is a hoot, the "Special" effects were so special, makes me wonder how it would be done today. Just wish I could find the European version. Anyway I recommend this just because they don't make movies like this any more.Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy
|
