Dark Star (1974)

Hilarious, taking the mickey out of science fiction films but still honoring the genre. I love it

There was always a dearth of sci-fi movies on the television as I was growing up, and this one used to appear rather regularly - and rather disappointingly too. It's supposed to be funny, but somehow the humour is just too contrived to make for much to remember as a group of astronauts start their twenty-year mission into outer space tasked with destroying unstable planets. Over time, though, the crew start to question the morality of their quest and coupled with the antics of their pet (looks like a rubber space-hopper) they find themselves facing the ultimate, explosive, dilemma. In it's favour, it is quite short and it doesn't hang around, but the acting is all just bit bland and there's way, way, too much script with little else by way of action to pad out the thin story that aims for parody but falls well short. Maybe we'd all be this way after a couple of decades in deep space, but somehow I think I'd have reached for the airlock about ten years earlier. In many ways it reminded me of a sort of "Monty Python" does life amongst the stars only with some ropey, low-budget, visual effects and annoying characters about whom I really didn't care. It'd been a while since I'd seen it, and will probably be the same before I watch it again.