Gonna leave you this friday with the parody of Charlie's Angels seen in the second Scary Movie back in 2001. The Charlie's Angels reboot had just been released a year prior and comedy writers were surely going to tackle it in some way.
In this scene Cindy, Brenda and Theo are chasing after the deformed villain down the stairs. Cindy kicks the door down and the action music kicks in as well. Clothing begins to fall to the stairs, presumably because they are changing into their action outfits but whoops! they end up in their underwear! They then run away in shame. What? People in underwear are funny.
Later they get into their combat outfits, kind of reminiscent of the ones in the movies, and they fight the bad guy. Lot’s of jumping around and combat choreographies ensue. The final showdown is between the villain and Cindy, they show off their techniques, such as “The Cow” and “The Cameltoe” (the later one entails having Cindy pull on her pants showing her cameltoe). The scene ends with the butler convulsing and having lights come out of his face, serving as a transition for the next scene.
A funny sequence that goes on for longer than most references in parody movies. I will give them that, they stuck to it, making this better than Disaster Movie or something. The gals perhaps could have used more action roles because they pull off the physical comedy here very well. Could you imagine a parody movie series with action girls and them in the leading roles? Could have been nice but maybe the real Charlie's Angels movies were too silly to begin with.
Here we have a strange and curious entry in the scifi genre, a science fiction comedy with a tragic backstory. The film was to be among the first few serious roles by playmate Dorothy Stratten, this was supposed to be her first starring role that would launch her real acting career but her life was cut short, her boyfriend got jealous of her relationship with director Peter Bogdanovich and decided to murder her by shooting her and then committing suicide. The movie was released just one day prior to the murder-suicide and was pulled a day after in order to receive a later release. A sad story of a life and a potential star taken away too soon.
Galaxina is about a group of Space Police members in the year 3008, they have different misadventures in their cruiser and in an asteroid brothel but then a mission requires the men to be placed in suspended animation for several years. In the meantime, the android assistant of the captain, Galaxina, begins to become more sentient and more human, beginning to develop emotions for Thor, the first officer. Several space shenanigans occur then.
The film has decent special effects and production design for a movie of its kind, the light tone makes it somewhat palatable and there's interesting creatures and settings but it's overall a very mixed bag at best. Probably the biggest problem is the lack of agency and importance regarding the title character (she doesn't even show up until 24 minutes into the film!), by this time in mainstream cinema most female heroes werent truly popular in Hollywood and the only reference people had was Alien (1979), a few female secondary characters (Leia in Star Wars for example), the women in prison movies and the rape revenge genre, but two years earlier we saw a much better heroine in Starcrash (1978) who was not only tougher than Galaxina but also the main character, by comparison, this is just kind of dull.
Most of the movie is just a collection of flat jokes and slow plot development, often opting for a horribly sluggish pace, trusting that the sets will entertain and dazzle the audience. They don't. It tumbles down into a very boring experience with little conflict and banal jokes without effective punchlines or proper set ups. Not to mention, this is simply a rip off of much better movies, it imitates the Star Wars cantina scene (two times!) and several other moments from more well-known films but it never achieves more than just a tiny snicker here and there.
There’s a potentially interesting idea about Galaxina wanting to be more human and experience love but that's just an excuse to add romance or sexy scenes to the movie more than anything else.
The best sequence is the one with Galaxina walking into a western town looking for a gemstone named the Blue Star and encounters a bunch of human-eating aliens and has a duel with an alien. The ambience is as loony as it should be, the shots are striking because of the attractive and imaginative visuals and Galaxina looks wonderful in action (finally!). The movie needed more scenes like that one but unfortunately it wasn't meant to be.
You see, the shooting schedule for the film was cut short due to bad weather and several scenes had to be cut in order to finish the film in time. Even the director, William Sachs, admits that the pacing is too slow and that the story doesn't really make much sense, the ending and plot development feel rushed or downright non-existent for the most part, skipping plot points and the meat of the story, leaving us with a rough cut that is missing a good chunk of the story. Perhaps one day someone can remake it with the full script? Would be a good idea.
As for now, just stick to the artwork and the few decent scenes with Galaxina because her design and Dorothy's screen presence are worthwhile.
This episode opens with Kei listening to music but this annoys Yuri, who can't concentrate on her reading and has a small fight with her partner and friend, ending up with Kei hurting her nose when the zero gravity mode is deactivated. Kei then reveals that she has a date with a boy younger than her at Planet Antares, where they are heading in their rented spaceship.
They are intercepted by a huge unknown thing that causes turbulence and flashes. The event disturbs the girls who land safely at a space station. Kei gets told she can't leave the station, ruining her plans and getting upset about it. The girls identify themselves and manage to enter the city.
Kei takes a shower while Yuri walks around the streets and gets sudden visions, flashbacks to the incident, and a strange voice cries: “Die!”
The redhead is preparing for her date but something attacks her and she shoots it, causing a commotion. A bunch of ships also start attacking the city, specifically Yuri. Kei then shoots at a ghastly device and chases it throughout the city, in her undergarments no less, in fact, she's in her underwear throughout half of the episode. Yuri also faces off against some machines.
Yuri saves Kei and both of them leave the planet and engage in a space fight against the ships that are following them, Yuri theorizes that they are trying to capture them alive for unknown reasons. They are then taken to a disposal station for nuclear waste, the girls then evacuate the ship in their space suits and they are swiftly attacked by the mechanical enemies surrounding them.
They realize that the creator of the disposal station was a mad scientist named Criados who designed the place like a technological nightmare, a doom trap created to get revenge on the Dirty Pair since the gals defeated him in a previous case. A countdown begins and the Lovely Angels then are forced to escape the traps set there by the deceased madman.
Their little companion robot, Nanmo, gives them its memory disk. They use the robot's self-destruct feature in order to blow up the center of the station and get rid of the AI that controlled the place. After that, Yuri is left alone in the rubbles by Kei, who promptly flees to get to her previously mentioned date.
The mystery unfolds in quite an engaging manner, you never really get a true sense of what's going on and the investigation actually becomes rewarding because of how unpredictable it is. The animation is again top notch and the actual designs and details of the ships and the giant fortress in this episode are some of the best in the series.
It's an outlier in the sense that it sets the comedy and the fights aside in service of the procedural and astounding vehicle and mechanical designs but it works despite some small contrivances that are inevitable because of the quick nature of the format. Another great episode overall.
