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"Buck Rogers in the 25th Century"
Theatrical Film (1979) and TV Series
(1979-81)
Articles
"Buck Rogers in the 25th
Century" film review
from The New York Times, March 30, 1979.
By Vincent Canby
"Buck Rogers in the 25th
Century," which opens today at the RKO 86th Street Twin 1 and other theaters, is to
movie-going what corn flakes are to eating. Just to anticipate it is to know
everything about it. Some intelligent, sophisticated people have knocked themselves
out to transform bland into bland, and they have succeeded to the extent that anyone who
fondly remembers the comic strip, or the old movie serial with Buster Crabbe, probably
will not feel cheated. After all, people who order corn flakes seldom send them back
to the chef.
The screenwriters, Glen A Larson and
Leslie Stevens, the one-time Broadway playwright ("The Marriage-Go-Round"),
appear to have been inspired as much by "Star Wars" as by the comic strip about
the 20th century pilot who awakens in the 25th century. They’ve added a
relentlessly cute drone, Twiki (voice by Mel Blanc), who’s approximately the size of
your extra gasoline can and who carries around his neck a computer named Theo, who looks
like a headlight off a Cadillac and talks like a doctor in a commercial about stomach
distress.
As in "Superman," the movie
never quite concludes, leaving the way open for the further serialization of
feature-length motion pictures. If there were not already a second Buck Rogers film
in the works, there’d be no explanation for the brief,
now-you-see-him-now-you-don’t appearance of Joseph Wiseman as the tyrant Draco, king
of Draconia, the galaxy whose tereble plans for Earth form what might loosely be called
the story.
The only other member of the cast who is
familiar is Henry Silva, as the character who, in the comic strip, was know as Killer Kane
but who here is called simply Kane, the chief flunky and minister-of-state to Draco’s
headstrong daughter, Princess Ardala.
Gil Gerard, the new actor who plays Buck,
looks quite right for the role – handsome in the undistinguished way of dozens of
Hollywood actors of the 30’s who never quite made the grade in A-pictures. He
may well be the John Ridgely or Dennis O’Keefe of the 70’s, especially since his
manner of delivering the script’s laboriously updated wisecracks recalls Dennis
O’Keefe with bad material. Erin Gray, a former photographer’s model with
high-fashion beauty, plays the virtuous Wilma and is much funnier in her serious intensity
than Mr. Gerard when he attempts to be flip.
Pamela Hensley is the film’s most
magnificent special effect as the wicked, lusty Princess Ardala, a tall, fantastically
built woman who dresses in Jewelry that functions as clothes and walks as if every floor
were a burlesque runway.
Daniel Haller, who learned his trade with
Roger Corman, may not be the wittiest of directors but he displays a brisk, no-nonsense
approach to film-making that is immensely helpful in this kind of film. The movie is
paced to hold the interest of the smallest brain.
The special effects? We see space
ships, the 25th-century city that has replaced 20th-century Chicago, dread mutants
deformed by the earlier holocaust and all sorts of other, theoretically unbelievable
things. My problem is that after awhile all these movies look alike.
One set, however, deserves special
mention. It is Princess Ardala’s command craft, a space ship so roomy that it
contains a throne room as well as a bathtub as big as an Olympic-size swimming pool.
The exterior of the ship looks very much like the temple of Queens Hatshepsut at Thebes,
miraculously made airborne and set adrift in a serene cosmos.
"Buck Rogers in the 25th
Century," which has been rated PG ("parental guidance suggested"), contains
one naughty 20th-century word of German roots and a lot of failed double-entendres that
work only one way.
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