Barbarella (1968)

Finnish title:
“Barbarella: Mistress
of the Planets”

Directed by: Roger Vadim

Written by: Vittorio Bonicelli, Claude Brule, Tudor Gates, Terry Southern, Roger Vadim

Starring: Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, Anita Pallenberg

Running Time: 1 hour, 38 minutes

Rating: PG

Pre-Conceived Notions: I just watched the trailer, and woah. This is supposed to take place in the 41st century? It looks like it takes place in a world where style repeats the same 20th-century decades over and over, and they’re on their 216th repetition of the 60s. Here’s the Netflix description of what I’m about to see:

“A shapely 41st-century space traveler must apprehend scientist Durand Durand, whose creation threatens to bring evil back to the galaxy. En route, Barbarella discovers the joys of celestial sex and has kinky misadventures with bizarre characters.” 

Alrighty then.

Why I Haven't Seen This Film: I’ve never been one for science fiction classics. But I’m always willing to try new things.

1 hour, 38 minutes later…: Watching movies like this is a very fascinating look at how other times view the future. First off, in the ‘60s, nobody thought shag would ever go out of style, apparently. Because it’s everywhere in the film. Barbarella’s ship was wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling shag. Brown shag, to boot. And apparently back then, ‘translucent plastic tubing’ equalled ‘futuristic.’ 

The plot was sort of all over the place. It limped along from set to set, alternating from an off-screen sex scene, to a bizarre attack scene featuring identical twins from hell, to hand sex, to stoners smoking the essence of man (which is kinda icky if you think about for too long), to the Lava Lamp Sexy Time Room of Death (a.k.a. the Dark Queen’s Chamber of Dreams or whatever it was). 

It was like the whole movie existed just to show off Jane Fonda’s assets, namely the speed in which she changed outfits. Outfits that featured translucent boob domes and spandex, because it’s the future, and nothing protects sexy space navigatrixes from creepy piranha-toothed wind-up doll and exotic parrot attacks like boob domes and spandex. Good choice, Barbarella! Oh, and let’s have a blind angel with the most annoying name ever so that Barbarella can say it over and over again like he doesn’t know his own freaking name. That’s a good idea. Also, an arch villain whose master plan is to pleasure someone to death? Not really an arch villain in my book. 

Final Thoughts: 2 out of 6 slices of pizza. Plastic tubing, a plague of parrots, and man essence is way too much for me to handle. But it was kinda of fun to chuckle along this train wreck of a movie.