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
