When Camp is Crap

Poor Jane Fonda.

It’s not often that a multi-millionaire celebrity deserves our pity, but after being remembered primarily for the load of tripe that is “Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy,” (other than the work-out vids and treason-tastic photo on the anti-aircraft battery) Ms. Fonda – in all her generous beauty and talent – deserves our deepest sympathies.

This oft-described “space epic” begins (and thereupon decays) without the proverbial bang or whimper on an Earth in the fortieth century, when our planet has evolved past such base urges as physical intercourse (they’ve got a nifty pill for that) and destructive emotions.

Instead, the pinnacle of greatness in this highly developed and cerebral society spends her days engaging in zero-gravity strip-teases and naked – though highly official – conversations with the planet’s president.
A PG-rating must have been incredibly easy to come by in 1968. شرح لعبة بينجو

Earth’s leading scientist – Durand-Durand – is apparently missing and only Barbarella can retrieve him from backwater planet SoGo to save the galaxy.

Her methods of search and seizure are sure the please even the most ardent of the SoGo’s sex offenders. For the rest of us, however, a quasi-cohesive storyline would have been nice.

Although anyone loves the quirky challenge presented by the lack of a well-developed plot – and “Barbarella” has poor writing and shallow, unfunny metaphors in spades – the sheer weight of flaws in this film greatly outweighs any attributes.

Let’s begin with the acting. Not even Fonda’s flawlessly executed, wide-eyed innocence is enough to save this cinematic debacle. So, realistically, the poor performances by the rest of the cast shouldn’t even matter.

But what’s the fun in ignoring that?

John Phillip Law’s (Space Mutiny) performance as the angel, Pygar, is simultaneously stoically rigid and silly – a mind-bogglingly difficult combination. Perhaps there is some genius to “Barbarella,” after all.
Anita Pallenberg (Mister Lonely) is only effective of eliciting the ever-deflating groan as the Great Tyrant, making it easy for all to see precisely why her career didn’t go anywhere.

Throughout the 108-minute mental massacre, Barbarella – whose only real power manifests in being captured and sexually exploited – manages to get chewed by living dolls, pecked by birds (to which she dramatically replies, “this is much too poetic a way to die.” Har-dee-har-har. Carrot-top could come up with better one-liners, on a slow day, with Will Ferrell as his muse and while watching “The Oblongs”) and finally overwhelms the sex-a-matron.

It apparently orgasms its victim to death. Lovely.

In a move that seemingly predates hentai, Barbarella manages to straddle several seemingly opposing attributes of male fantasy. She’s initially a virgin, though she’s a sex goddess. She’s incapable of saying “no,” though an apocalyptic entity is repulsed by her innocence.

With all this raging exploitation, one would assume that it’s offensive to women. Hardly – specifically because it’s hard to watch. لعبه القمار If anything, “Barbarella” is offensive to the viewers’ time and shamefully abusive to their attention spans.

Of course, it can be argued that this entire slew of badness is entirely intentional – that “Barbarella’s” greatest joke lies simply in how awful and silly and senseless it is – ultimate camp. Unfortunately, the precise lack of inspired creation is not in itself art; if it was, Ben Stiller would have caught up to his genuinely funny dad ages ago.

As it is, “Barbarella” is easily the Ben Stiller of cinema – unfunny, unwatchable and ultimately unsalvageable.
To top it all off, the DVD is entirely devoid of special features, with the exception of the original theatrical trailer. Not even subtitles can be found on a disc that so ironically resembles its content.

Do yourself a favor. When next stricken with the ardent desire to sit stationary for nearly two hours, promptly place yourself in front of a garbage-laden truck on scorching New York afternoon with a bag of liver chips and a mucus pepsi. The experience will be infinitely better than Fonda’s greatest embarrassment. لعبه القمار روليت
When camp is crap, you get “Barbarella.”