The Soapbox: Rants and Commentary: It Was Borderline Good Composed by David Anderson, Jr.(oommp@webspan.net) January 1998 Something disturbed me about this past weekend's episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and I'm not quite sure I'm eloquent or imaginative enough to put it to words correctly. Bear with me as we find out. You see, on this weekend's episode they made fun of an awful film called, The Space Children. This boring little piece of 50's sci-fi guano featured a bunch of marginally talented actors haphazardly standing about and expositioning the plot from start to finish. Like most of these sewage level films, the writer and or director and or producer and or anyone else involved in the making of this film was not imaginative enough to make a movie with something other than people standing about chatting. Just as a brief side note, it is my belief that film is, in some ways, the antithesis of prose in that, many times, it is better to show what is happening than portraying it through dialog, as is the case with fiction novels. Many people can point out examples of why this, "show instead of say" attitude isn't always correct in films, the opening sequence of Pulp Fiction comes to mind. To them, I would say, "The Godfather, Part II, when Michael tells his hitman to kill Fredo with his eyes." At any rate, this movie was so bad Mike and the 'bots had a hard time picking out points with which to quip upon. It was poorly executed, but I'm not all too upset about botched execution. That Hollywood would produce a movie is almost as alarming to me as a White House sex scandal at this point. What bothers me is somewhere, underneath all of that protoplasmic goo, there was a good solid idea for a movie. I mean, a really good idea. General Premise: A bunch of kids are living at an government installation. Their parents are all scientists on an ultra secret project that will launch a killer nuclear satellite into space. An alien comes to earth and recruits the children to stop the launch. Reading it here I realize I'm not wrong about this. That is a darn good idea. In the hands of a talented group of individuals you could have a tightly wound action thriller, with government agents hounding the children and global destruction hanging in the balance. You could do great scenes of a physically unimposing alien relying on the action and quick-thinking of a group of misfit children. As an added bonus, it could be a group of children who would never be found together in the first place. Kind of a fast moving Breakfast Club, without Alley Sheedy of course. I see a countdown and obsessed scientists and G. Gordan Liddy rip offs in black suits running about with automatic weapons along with some character development of the parents who realize their children, and the alien, are right about bigger and badder weapons and the question of where the alien came from and... Sorry. Of course, what we got was a poorly directed piece of crap that moved like an aircraft carrier through the Panama Canal. The highlight of the film was seeing Jackie "Uncle Fester" Coogin in disturbingly short swimming trunks. There are three kinds of people in this world of entertainment. Those who can, really well. I think James Cameron is a fine example of this. Those who think they can but don't even have enough on the ball to figure out they suck. Joel Schumacker is a prime example of this. (Car Wash aside.) Then there are those of us who have a feeling we could, but are too scared or lazy to do anything about it. So we write commentary instead. Those are just a few of my thoughts. Back To Rants and Commentary

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