Starring: Julia Dietze, Goetz Otto, Christopher Kirby, Stephanie Paul, Peta Sergeant, Udo Keir
Distributor: Hoyts
Runtime: 93 mins. Reviewed in May 2012
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If you are a fan of B-Budget (and B-mentality) science fiction movies and cherish some of those corny images from the past, the absurd stories, the (very) limited sets and special effects, then this is the film for you. If not, you might get stuck in the intentionally (and often successful) ridiculous situations and dialogue, perhaps inclined to take it more seriously than should be and dismiss it. To that extent, Iron Sky is quite a specialised film with a target audience.
Of course, it is absurd, but this reviewer found some of it quite funny, generally keeping a smile on my face.
Nazis on the dark side of the moon! They went there in 1945, escaping from Hitler’s downfall to begin the Fourth Reich. Unfortunately, their technology (especially over-large computers and a deadly space ship called Gotterdamerung) belongs to the 1940s – though the screenplay then gives them some flying saucer space ships which let them get to earth in next to no time, no accommodation to gravity or space suits needed: it is that kind of film.
The year is 2018 and a US election year (which, of course, it isn’t) and a Sarah Palin look-and-sound-alike (Stephanie Paul obviously relishing her lines and her bellicose strategies) is campaigning for re-election. A moon trip (with an African American model used in her advertising on board) is part of her PR. But, then, the model, Jim Washington (Christopher Kirby), discovers and is captured by the Nazis. The current Fuhrer (Udo Keir) is ailing and a giant Aryan (Goetz Otto) is ready to take over and produce perfect offspring with teacher, Renate (Julie Dietze). The Fuhrer-in-waiting goes to Earth to prepare the invasion, Renate stowing away and Jim having been transformed into white by the Nazi ‘albiniser’.
The hijinks in the US are amusing, especially with the power-behind-the-throne (Peta Sergeant) clearly modeling herself on the arch-villains of the past, dressed in black and performing in more than melodramatic manner, especially when she goes off in the attack space ship, the USS George W. Bush.
Actually, the sets and special effects are pretty good. We would have been satisfied with lesser.
The performances are what is required for this kind of spoof. There is quite a deal of amusing dialogue, generally at the expense of US politics – the president’s campaign slogan is ‘Yes, she can’. But the satire is generally attacking the Right (even a version of The Star Spangled Banner) which means that it won’t be on the Tea Party’s shortlist for a movie night. (Nor for Neo-Nazi socials.)
It seems German audiences have been able to laugh at the parody. The whole film is Finnish in conception (avening the war? – and much of it made in Queensland and with Australian finance.
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