2001: A Space Travesty

I kinda watched this film in a bad mood hoping for a good laugh, Leslie Neilson always makes me laugh. Especially parody movies, since I wasn't into 2001: A Space Odessey, I thought that this was a fun looking movie that would make fun of that film. Well, it turned into something pretty bad, I really couldn't find myself laughing at any of the situations, which is sad, because I find the stupidest situations very funny and I am easily amused. But I was curious if maybe it was my bad mood that killed the comedy for me, but I looked on IMDb before watching it again and it's not just me apparently.

Well, a some what take off of the Naked Gun series, only in outer space situations, Leslie is now Dick Dix, a clumsy detective that is sent to a planet called Vegan where he learns that President Clinton has been kidnapped and cloned and that the clone is on Earth with bad intentions for the world. Or as it seems, Dick actually plants the clone by accident and well... it just wasn't funny.

The jokes tried too hard and the story was just weak, it could have been something special, but unfortunately they took too much advantage of the Naked Gun series, which was pretty sad. I know Leslie can do much better and he has, so I forgive him. For those users who are looking for a recommendation here, I'm not going to give you one because like I said, I thought it was just me that didn't like the film, but I think the rating is enough warning in itself.

3/10

I'm curious: doesn't Leslie Nielsen (once a decent actor) read the scripts of the movies he's playing in anymore? It seems that nowadays all the writers or director of a movie need to do is tell Nielsen: Hey we're gonna make fun of some other movies, interested? And Nielsen would just sit there like, 'yeah'!

Instead of what the title would assume, 2001's main victim isn't A Space Odyssey but the more recent Men In Black. But, having said that, I cannot think of one decent joke relating to that movie. Nor can I tell here what the story is all about... it's got something to do with the president being swapped with a clone, or not, or whatever.

By lack of anything good to offer director Goldstein just throws some lusty women into it, but perhaps it says all that no well-known woman apparently would like to take up the job, so we have to do with an unknown French woman and an unknown German one...

In fact, I don't know of any reason why I should recommend this movie. Some lame jokes are just about OK, but nothing more than a 2/10 if you'd ask me.

This is another spoof movie starring Leslie Nielsen, and I first heard of it a while ago, and knew it was obviously a sci-fi spoof. The title is derived from Stanley Kubrick's groundbreaking 1968 film, "2001: A Space Odyssey", though this film is certainly not entirely a parody of that one. I've seen that particular Kubrick movie several times, but was not as impressed with it during my last viewing, in January 2008. Still, the title of this 2000 comedy, "2001: A Space Travesty", was what brought it to my attention, since I obviously know where this title came from. I could see that this was not one of Nielsen's popular spoofs, but after a while, and only about 24 hours after first watching "Airplane!", an earlier parody film with Nielsen (and a MUCH better one) this week, I watched this despised sci-fi comedy. While I didn't find it to be QUITE as bad as many others have (maybe most other people who have seen in at some point in the past decade think it's worse than I do), I still thought it was a lousy attempt at comedy, so I can't defend it.

Marshall "Dick" Dix is a clumsy detective who is informed that the President of the United States (a nameless character, but obviously based on Bill Clinton) is being held captive on a moon base called Vegan and has been replaced by a clone! The detective is sent out of Earth's atmosphere to this moon base, on a mission to rescue the real president and find out who's responsible for the crime. He is accompanied on this mission by an officer named Cassandra Menage. Together, the two of them make it to Vegan, where they see that there are many beings around, both human and alien. Dix and Menage begin their inspection, which will obviously not be helped by Dix's clumsiness. After defeating the evil Dr. Griffin Pratt and his hoodlums in a fight, thanks largely to Menage's martial arts skills, the two inspectors escape from the moon and take the president with them. Back on Earth, Dix puts who he thinks is the real president back in the White House, but it turns out he has just replaced the real president with the clone! Even though the detective has messed up, it's still up to him to save his home planet, so the mission which started with a trip to the moon now continues on Earth!

"2001: A Space Odyssey" is obviously too slow paced for some viewers, and it did seem too slow to me the last time I watched it, but with only one viewing of "2001: A Space TRAVESTY", it seemed to me that it had the opposite problem, it was too fast! The direction seems so rushed and unfocused, and so does Leslie Nielsen's narration. Unfortunately, the problems certainly don't end here. The movie is full of very juvenile and unfunny humour, and since it's a comedy, that's its main problem. This already shows during the opening sequence and is featured in many other scenes, including the penis jokes about the main protagonist's name, Dix trying to use a spaceship toilet on the way to the moon just as the artificial gravity is turned off, a human on the moon coming out of the bathroom covered in alien waste, condoms which are found later in the film, etc. There are so many gags here which obviously took no comedic talent whatsoever to come up with! Not only does the toilet humour fail, so does the slapstick, with such occurrences as Dix accidentally making a huge mess during his inspection on Vegan. The gags generally seem like they were just thrown in with very little or no thought put into them. In addition to that, the film also seemed too noisy to me.

Unfortunately, with all this movie's flaws, it's most certainly a misfire. Leslie Nielsen's character here is like Lieutenant Frank Drebin, his character in the "Naked Gun" series (they're both clumsy detectives), but if you're a fan of any or all of those movies, that certainly doesn't mean you're guaranteed to like this later spoof. I remember one time when I was in high school, a student was banned from my school bus route after playing with a dildo during the ride home and giving the bus driver attitude when he told him to get off the bus. "2001: A Space Travesty" seems like it was written by hyperactive high school students like that guy! I'll admit, I did smile at times while watching this film, but this was VERY rare, and I never actually laughed. Not only did it not make me laugh, I may have had a slight headache while watching it, which the film didn't help. Yes, my rating for this sci-fi spoof is 4/10, which is higher than what seems to be the most popular rating for it, but I still don't like it. I even feel like 4/10 just might be too generous, and know that many people would believe that saying this rating is too generous is an understatement! If you've never watched this unpopular 2000 comedy, I strongly suggest you don't, whether you like Nielsen's comedy roles in general or not.

Oh dear. Poor old Leslie Neilsen must be the only movie star who feels like the rest of us: every day he has to get up for work and do the same thing over and over and over again...

This so-called comedy is in the style of Neilsen's Naked Gun flicks, but the humour on display here is far removed from the inspired zaniness of that series of films. Neilsen's OK - he can do this kind of thing with his eyes shut, I imagine - but everything else about this film is bad. The female lead in this just about passes muster, but she only weighs about two stone, and the bad guy used to be Richard Briers' suave neighbour in Ever Decreasing Circles back in the 80s, so its just about impossible to see him as a real baddie.

The film itself doesn't really have much to do with 2001 - in fact it looks more like a take on the Men in Black flicks, although films of every genre are referenced throughout. It does get marginally better in the last 20 minutes when the three tenors give a spirited rendition of Village People's In the Navy, but by then only the strongest-willed of viewers will still be around.

Bottom line: Everyone involved in this should hang their heads in shame...

I just wanted to make that joke because this movie is painfully awful.