"The crack about North Korea was sort of funny..."

Since hearing about it in February, I've really looked forward to any chance to watch Iron Sky.

Last night I finally got my chance. (People who like to argue about IP: Please don't ask how.) And all I can say is, "You had Moon Nazis going for you. You even had Sarah Palin as president. How could you - how could anyone - possibly screw up a satire with those advantages? I'm almost impressed."

Never has a film fallen so flat with me. I've seen ED WOOD flicks I enjoyed more than this. Disjointed plot, characters doing absurd things for opaque reasons when they had any reasons at all, dialogue I wouldn't wish on a hated enemy. Note to Scriptwriters: Absurdity is certainly permissible in a satire, but it has to make some sort of internal sense or at least be explained away. Otherwise, viewers like me will be too busy crossing their arms and fuming about how much you suck to have any energy left for following the movie. There actually were a couple of gags that I would have found funny, but by the time they came up I was already grinding my teeth and the film dashed right past them anyway.

It's just...flat. I watched the writers pass over one opportunity to be funny after another - it was almost as if that was the point. You'd think, in such a no-budget film, that the biggest problem would be the actors but some of them weren't completely terrible. They just had nothing whatsoever to work with. Even the computer graphics weren't totally awful, which means the production crew could have dwelt on space battles to liven things up in post. They apparently didn't think it was very important. The editing took a story that probably didn't make a lot of sense initially and jumbled it up as if the editors had just spilled reels on film on the floor and couldn't be bothered to sort them out before splicing them together any which way. Even the sound mixing was bad, which meant difficulty in trying to follow the dialogue added to the annoyance of learning that any such effort was usually pointless anyway.

I truly thought a movie about Moon Nazis would necessarily fall into one of two categories: Really good, or so campy bad it's good. No other alternative seemed possible. How can you screw up Moon Nazis?

Well, it can be done. If you don't believe me, go find a copy and watch. The only bit of encouragement I can offer is that it isn't extremely long.