Pandorum Review

I know this one you may not have heard of, but it was actually pretty damn good.

I had the pleasure of watching Pandorum over the weekend, with Dennis Quaid in it. His older brother, Randy, may be in a heap o' trouble with the LAAAAAAW, but Dennis is in fine form here. Last I heard, Randy and his wife were out on bail for skipping on a hotel bill. Usually, when I see an actor and I think "Oh, that's Dennis Quaid." Or whoever it happens to be, it's because the actor is well known enough and so indistinguishable from the characters they play, that I can't differentiate the actors from their roles. usually that means a good character actor, but not necessarily a good actor. In this case, it didn't matter. They could have called the character Dennis Quaid and it would have still been a good movie.

Let me sum up the movie first. That way, if you want to watch it and not see spoilers, you need read no further. If you don't mind the spoilers, read on after this paragraph. Summing it up, this was an excellent, fast-paced action movie. The crew of a colony ship wakes up from hypersleep, realizes things are not going according to plan, and tries to fix things, but all goes horribly wrong. I quite enjoyed watching this movie. First reason, there was nothing confusing here. Everything was explained with almost no questions left in my mind, if not immediately, then as the movie went on. You just don't see that in movies much anymore, but there it is. You don't need to infer anything, you don't need any scientific knowledge to understand what's going on. It's just all talked about between the actors so you get what's going on right away. Which is perfect. Also, the pace of the movie from beginning to end is pretty fast paced. It may start out a little slow, and by slow I don't mean ponderous or boring in any way, I mean slow in comparison to the rest of the movie, which moves so hell-bent toward it's conclusion that it's like me trying to fix a computer problem, I will hit it with a hammer until it either explodes or it gets better. Shut your whore mouth, I am a GREAT technician. If it explodes, we just replace whatever blew up and your problem is solved, and if it gets better, your problem is solved. Works every time. I may have some small issues with this movie now that I've seen it, but by all means, watch it. It brings Alien to mind when I watched it, for crying out loud, and you don't get that with many films, nosirreebob. Or whatever your name is. Hey for the purposes of this blog, your name is bob, now shut it and listen up! Because I'm about to tear this movie apart.

Now come the spoilers, and a general plot synopsis. Apparently, at some point in the not so distant future, we send a colony ship to another planet to colonize it. Way to go, us! And at some point, an engineer from Flight Crew 5 is released from his cryo- sleep- hibernation- chamber- thingy and gets dumped into an empty room. Now he's got short-term memory loss due to that whole sleeping for ages thing going on. Which I can completely understand, I mean, hell, I sleep 6 hours a night and I can't even remember who the hell I am, where I am, or where my pants are when I wake up. But, that might be the drugs. or the booze. Or the insanity, shit, who knows. So this guy stumbles around, figures out he's in flight crew 5, tries to get out of the room he's in, and generally can't. At some point, he awakens Dennis Quaid, who is apparently a superior officer. They compare tattoos, which identify them as flight crew 5, and realize, HEY.. THOSE DAMN BASTIDS FROM FLIGHT CREW 4 WERE SUPPOSED TO WAKE US! WHERE THE HELL ARE THEY??? So they start trying to find out where they are, what happened to flight crew 4, and where the HELL is the bathroom, because they've been sleeping for years and MAN do they gotta take a SHIT!!! Okay, I just made that last part up.

Well, as it turns out, flight crew 5 is on it's own, and at the same time, they aren't! MUA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAA!!!! Yes, that sounds suitably vague and remotely terrifying, I know. I'm just going to let you know my individual problems with this movie, because honestly, they are small and insignificant in comparison to how good this movie really is.

One, the tattoos. Dennis Quaid has a tattoo which identifies him as being on Flight Crew 5. Later on in the movie, we learn he's actually NOT part of flight crew 5. Which confuses me. How does he have a tat saying he's in flight crew 5? Did he fly the colony ship to some interplanetary space tattoo parlor and get his tat changed on the way? I mean, even if his tat had said Flight crew 1, he may have changed it to read 4, with a little permanent marker or something. But changing it to a 5? How does he manage that? I am pretty sure they show his tattoo, I mean, maybe my memory is futzing with me at this point, but they compare tats in every other scene in this movie, soooooo i don't see how dennis quaid got out of showing his. Hell, just to see this movie at home I had to scan my tramp stamp with my remote. You know, the tat of the archangel Michael I have just above my buttcrack? Yea, that one! I know, really, talk about age verification software. I'd hate to think what I'd have had to do if I had seen this movie at the theater.

Two, there's this other group of people living on the ship. Their origins are pretty much explained, but here's my problem, Pandorum actually refers to like this "space sickness" that causes hallucinations and stuff, and later on in the movie, the engineer fellow has this hallucination about the other group of people. It's towards the end of the movie, and what confuses me now is, did the other group ever even exist? Or were they hallucination throughout the entire movie? Because if they were, I hate movies like that. It's just confusing as hell. Did anything actually happen? Or was it all hallucination? This does not titillate me. It annoys me. Movies should not be confusing, they should be enjoyable. If I wanted confusion, I'd watch politics.

Speaking of confusion, it's wednesday. Happy town is on tonight. I get to see more of that totally hot chick, I actually looked up her name this time, it's Lauren German, according to IMDB.com, and she's 32, I'm 8 years older than her, so I am perfect in that whole looking for an older man kind of way. That is, if she likes her older men chubby, hairy, poor and nucking futs. From past experience and years of watching celebrity romances, hot chicks are TOTALLY insane and have horribly poor taste in men, so I think I'm IN! :-D