Movie of the Day: Iron Sky (2012)

The Film: Iron Sky (2012)

The Principles: Timo Vuorensola (Director). Julia Dietze, Peta Sergeant, Udo Kier, Chrisotpher Kirby and Gotz Otto

The Premise: A Palin-esque US President sends a black man to the moon to help her re-election campaign in 2018, but the black man gets dyed white when he discovers Nazis on the dark side of the moon who are planning on world domination.

Is It Good: I enjoyed it, but it depends on how serious you take your science fiction and your possible US allegiance. I had no idea what to expect, other than space invading nazis and it turns out there was a lot more. The movie never takes itself seriously, never too far away from a Zucker Zucker Abrams film of days past. While nowhere close to the number of jokes per second, this appeared to me to be a love child of Top Secret and Galaxy Quest. The jokes range from having an Albert Einstein clone as a mad scientist to dying a black man and bleaching his hair, to make him turn nazi.

There is no doubt about the US based jokes though. If you are a die hard Patriot that cannot laugh at jokes about America, stay away. A phallic like space ship named the George W. Bush followed by a play on the careless bombing of women and children, nothing is above the reach of parody when the topic is the land of the free. The president looks like Sarah Palin and mimics the most outrageous satirical look at her most insane moments. The dealings with the UN, and nearly brain-dead president and her seductive campaign manager from MTV pushed my limits, but in the end it was all in good fun.

Their are no physics in this film. In fact, don’t try to have it make sense. It doesn’t. How did the Nazis get there? How have they survived? How do Zeppelins make it through Earth’s atmosphere? How do they breath on the moon if they don’t have oxygen masks on? How is Udo Kier not the star of this film? These questions and many more are never answered. If you think all science fiction needs to have some reality, stay away. If you just want a movie you don’t have to analyze because you can tell right off it takes pride in not being believable, then this is for you.

The effects are well done for the most part (what was with the poorly rendered astronaut at the beginning?), and the movie is beautifully shot. It does suffer from a lack of colors though, which give the film much more a lengthy and serious tone than may have benefited it. I found myself often comparing the aesthetics to Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, but much more grey and dreary. The cast was great and the jokes kept the movie flowing to overcome the dismal palette.