Space Wars: Quest for the Deepstar

Know what? I reckon the eponymous "Deepstar" saw the storyboard and post-haste fled into hiding! That left space scroungers "Kip" (Michael Paré) and his feisty daughter "Taylor" (Sarah French) faced with quite a search to track it down. Along the way they realise that they are not the only seekers of this dream-fulfilling gizmo - beware "Dykstra" (Olivier Gruner) - and that the universe is really quite a perilous place! This has video game written all over it with the dangers seemingly increasing exponentially until the prize is (or isn't in their grasp). The visual effects are passable, but the rest of this is pretty sub-par(sec) stuff that is clearly a labour of love for those behind it but it's really just a labour for those of us who recall the heady days of the "Outer Limits" - from about 1963! To be fair, it moves along quickly enough but it's all rather unsahsamedly predicable gung-ho stuff you may smile at - risibly - before you immediately forget all about it.

I immediately noticed the very bad casting, all the actors lack charisma and personality and their acting is boring if not ridiculous.

The first half of the movie is just a sequence of actions with very few dialogs, so it's almost entertaining. Nothing spectacular or original. It feels like some washed out guardians of the galaxy, and we follow the heroes as they keep putting themselves in trouble. The CGI looks like a video game with some very bad green screens.

But that's where the film takes another turn for the worse, and the poor writing and acting take over the action scenes. It feels like they ran out of money and decided to focus on the character psychology. The film completely loses its pace and collapses into absolute mediocrity.

If you want some cheesy 60/70s sci-fi movies, watch Starcrash or Barbarella, they are better than this.

Really, the title of this review says it all. In the 1970's there were a number of cheap Italian knock-off sci-fi movies that were cheap, flashy and stupid. They also had STYLE.

This is pretty much a homage to those movies but with better effects and better actors. Yes, the script is stupid and the lines are awful but incredibly the actors do actually manage to give them some weight. Not a lot of weight, it must be said, but that they managed it at all is very much to their credit. The script manages to throw in some surprises, while (sigh) still including the many predictable scenes you come to expect from low budget movies

It's a very silly movie but it's also a remarkably enjoyable one that manages to decently punch above its low budget and a lot of credit goes to everyone involved in its making. By way of disclaimer - I was NOT involved in the production in any way, nor do I know anyone who was. Nobody goes out of their way to make a bad movie. They try to make a good movie, and with the limited resources available to them they came reasonably close to it.

So, get some popcorn, turn off your brain and enjoy it for what it is. A romp.

Oh, and I just noticed that someone else called their review "The 1970's called, they want their movie back" Ah well, I clearly wasn't the only fan of cheap Italian sci-fi knock-offs.

This movie is not very exciting. The special effects are CGI. How I miss stop motion animation like Robocop 2. The matte paintings, models, and a decent new science fiction movie with some gratuitous nudity. I mean if you are going to make a low budget science fiction movie, write cheesy dialogue, cheaper cgi then can't you throw in something worth while like A pair of naked boobies? I mean either write Oscar worthy sentences or throw in some flesh scenes to make it worth the 90 minutes that are required To view this. Space Wars is just boring. Maybe they can make a remake of it and add in exceptional quality dialogue and an occasionall nip slip.

It's a dream I have. Skip it and watch Life-force from 1985.

When checking out the preview and the average score for this movie, I had serious doubts. A low-budget Sci-Fi film with a preview that doesn't entice usually end up as poor fare.

At times the lighting was iffy, the graphics decent but not blockbuster, and the internal ship sets seemed a bit cramped; but a solid story with pretty good acting cancel out the minor flaws. Also, the pacing should be noted as excellent. At no point did my attention waver.

Space Wars: Quest for the Deepstar delivers in its quest for entertainment. I recommend that all Sci-Fi fans give this movie a chance like I did.