Iron Sky:
Ohdearsweetlordinheaven…where do I begin? What nice thing can I say to start off the
review? Um…“Iron Sky” has a great poster.
A black forest ham-fisted send-up of science fiction movies,
contemporary world politics and politicians, and race relations, this film is
generally goofy all the way around in a SyFy original movie kind of way. In the
year 2018, an American manned mission to the moon lands on the dark side, with
two astronauts aboard, one of them a Black male model named James Washington (this
is so that President Sarah Palin can use her slogan “Black to the Moon!”). They quickly discover that the moon is
swarming with Space Nazis bent on returning to the earth and world domination
(this has something to do with them being inspired by a snippet of Charlie
Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator”, specifically the part where Adenoid Hynkel is
bouncing the globe around). Washington
is subsequently captured by the Nazis, many of whom have never seen a real live
Black person before. One such Nazi is
Renate Richter (Julia Dietze), an “Earthologist” responsible for teaching the
young Nazi children about their mother planet and is destined for marriage to
moon officer Klaus Adler (Gotz Otto). As
her father is assigned the task of torturing Washington, Renate is intrigued by
the stranger. However, her father injects
an albinism solution into Washington to turn him into a white person that they
can convert to Nazism. And leading all
the Space Nazis on the moon is Wolfgang Kortzfleisch, played with his usual
watery-eyed sibilance by Udo Kier (when Udo is your tentpole actor, you’re
definitely in big trouble). Adler
decides to lead a small mission to earth after Washington convinces them that
he knows the president personally. So
Adler, Renate, and Washington land outside New York City. The Nazis kidnap Palin’s campaign manager
Vivian Wagner (Peta Sergeant) in order to get an audience with Palin, and
Wagner, not realizing they are really Nazis, spruces up their image to help sell
their message of fraternity, peace, and fascism to the American public…before they
turn on their American benefactors.
Renate also comes face-to-face with contemporary Nazis (skinheads),
which cause her to become disillusioned with the truth of Nazism and to join
Washington in his quest to stop the Space Nazis. Insert large space-going zeppelins and flying
saucers here. If that synopsis hasn’t
scared you away by now, there is probably something wrong with you. Sure, the movie is played with tongue planted
firmly in cheek, but that doesn’t mean that large swaths of are it still aren’t
painfully bad and make you wince, with low production values, bad dialogue, and
more than enough hammy acting to spare.
Sure, there are laughs remotely here and there, but it’s still a bit of
a bear to sit through. The producers of
the film have already threatened a sequel *AND* prequel, so you have been warned. Woodchuck sez, “Only if you’re desperate and
in the mood for Space Nazis.”
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