Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning

You have to see this movie. The opening scene was so amazingly professional that i thought i had downloaded the wrong film. But, the opening joke was so terribly cliché'd that i realized i got the right one.

I honestly could not tell the difference between the graphics in this movie and in a real start trek movie. Its simply amazing. I'd love to know what they use for CGI tools and how big is the rendering farm.

The scenes on-board the space ships were great, the sets were totally believable (much better than an original STAR TREK set, and most were BETTER than a ST:TNG set.) The acting was very good, the jokes were funny, the only thing separating this movie from a Hollywood film is a little bit of je-ne sais quois.

All in all, the most AMAZING amateur film i've ever seen, they should give these guys $10M and a team of 5 Hollywood (o.k., maybe new york) writers, and see what they can do in 3.5 years, rather than 7.

The trailer already whetted my appetite. But the movie itself is outstanding. If you are a fan of Star Trek, Babylon 5, etc you have probably also thought of some scenes you would like to see. For me this movie comes very close. The CGI effects can only be described as awesome. Every scene breathes the love of the staff for details. Especially the battle scenes are outstanding and give every Star Wars movie a run for its money. The plot is also masterly constructed. The tension builds up in the first twenty minutes or so and reaches several peaks after that. The story has a great tongue-in-cheek attitude. The characters are only slightly exaggerated compared to their respective originals which keeps them from getting on your nerves too fast. Fortunately the actors avoid overacting - which impressed me as this is still a fan movie after all. The only drawback is that the audio is Finish with English sub-titles. But what the heck: Hearing the tone of Pirk's derogatory remarks is compensation enough.

No spoilers here :) A very funny and multi-layer film for the fan of science fiction. Nothing like this has ever been made in Finland, and this is bound to put Finland on the sci-fi -map.

Some of the humor is very Finnish, a lot universal :) The structure of the film is nicely thought through and executed, with an ending that left me wondering if there is to be a sequel :) Considering that the actors excluding two or three if I am correct, were all amateurs, friends and volunteer fans, the movie was very skilfully over-acted and cast to the best possible Star Wreck -style. The actors were all charming and sure to win you over. To be noted that this is the 6th Star Wreck film made.

The effects are excellent, the war scenes actually do work in spite of the comedy nature which is never made cliché or a boring repetition, a pitfall of many parodies. Two thumbs-up for the music as well.

Hard to believe that this wasn't made by professionals.

All in all, a well-made full-length feature film.

Must-see for all sci-fi fans!

While rating this film I had to consider a few facts: It is a low-budget, do-it-yourself, fan-film. I could pick one of those perspectives and easily give it 10 stars but instead I will try to comment this film in light of any other movie since it really moves beyond those categories.

I saw the trailer but the final movie was not what you might expect from that. Although it's a comedy, the movie takes itself seriously and doesn't take easy shortcuts in doing so with style. It takes time to introduce a bunch of interesting characters. After that the comedy was at it's best when it was driven by these eccentric characters. There were no normal people in this universe.

There are great build-up's, the pacing works out pretty good and the space scenes don't overshadow the storytelling. When the CGI is on focus it's top quality visuals combined with an epic soundtrack. I do like a good space battle and the whole experience made my eyes glare with excitement. The main storyline would've worked without a few anecdote scenes but these scenes were so refreshing that it would have been a shame to receive a studio note to delete them. I welcomed every departure from the stale Hollywood formula with a smile.

Acting was OK at best with a few mild exceptions in the smallest roles. Nothing that distracted from the storytelling. Jari Ahola was brilliant as the Security Chief Karigrandi and the performance of Fukov was great fun.

I did wonder about what was the point of all. The lead character has a rather questionable morality and it felt a bit awkward at times. When the battles started I didn't know who to root for. Everyone suffers for their stupidity and the audience gets their laugh. Maybe the point is that "the universe is fair and we might get what we deserve".

All in all I laughed out loud many times in a movie theater and that doesn't happen often. I cheered and clapped and felt happy to see a movie like this. It is quite exceptional on any scale.

This was not the best Finnish movie ever but it was truly the most entertaining.

After listening to the rumors about this movie for about two months, i decided to download it myself to see what the fuss was all about. The guys who's brainchild star wreck is advertised the movie in radio and TV claiming it to be the most seen finnish film in the year 2005 based on the amount of downloads from their home site (of course you can add p2p on that number as well).

First and foremost, i find it astonishing that a group of nobodies can pull off a project like this. I salute them, even though i'm aware they have worked on star wreck for quite a while...they're still not professionals.

When you look at the starship effects, it's difficult to believe the above to be true. These ships can compete with the ones seen on the TV-series any day. Naturally time has passed, and the effects can be created without the kind of money needed back in the day, but it's still amazing this whole thing was pulled of virtually without money.

The sets and uniforms look good, too. The Star Trek ships look very good on the inside as well, the Babylon 5 ship a bit more stale, but in the same sentence i must admit i did not watch Babylon 5 when it was on TV, so it's possible that's the way it should look like.

After all the praise we must unfortunately move on to the things that did NOT work for the benefit of this movie. The acting, let's face it, is amateurish. That's not the real problem, however. The problem is the way the crew decided to deliver the comedy. Comedy is a difficult form of acting, even the masters of the craft know it. At times the acting in Star Wreck goes just silly, and beyond. It may be less obvious to non-finns who are watching this with subtitles, only understanding the witty writing (which i thought was great, by the way), and missing what the actors are actually saying and how. At points i chuckled, but at times i felt a bit ashamed, to tell you the truth. A good example of the diversity is how the same actor first annoys the hell out of you with the character Sergei Fukov, and then delivers almost like a pro as Festerbester. Overall i felt these actors could've pulled off a bit more serious version of this movie, or a poker-face spoof in the spirit of Leslie Nielsen and Charlie Sheen. As it is, the silly faces and shouting, and near slapstick just doesn't work.

Finally, i see many of you IMDb browsers did not give this film a fair rating. I've decided to treat this movie as i would any other, despite the many redeeming factors. After all, it's the end result i'm reviewing here.

rating: 5/10 - shows promise