Here, from the early 1980's I believe, is the bizarre double feature of the Disney Studio's STAR WARS rip-off THE BLACK HOLE with Walt's late animated feature SLEEPING BEAUTY. The former featured cardboard characters, stunt casting, unfunny "cute" robots, a dragging pace and only passable special effects and yet was highly touted as the company's "state of the art" production that would prove once and for all that no one did fantasy like Disney!
The latter, of course, although made a couple of decades earlier, HAD actually proven that exact point only to have Disney execs down through the years go out of their way to prove that it was no longer true. Alas...
A better title for "The Black Hole" of course would have been 20,000 Leagues in Outer Space. Visually dazzling, but some really uninteresting characters, uninteresting story and fuzzy resolution kind of sank it. Among the half-baked ideas was Yvette Mimeux could telepathically communicate with the Roddy McDowell robot. It contributed nothing to the story, and was kind of silly. Why not use a radio?
ReplyDeleteThere was one good joke though, The crew finds a scientist missing in space for 20 years, and the crew's jounalist (Ernest Borgnine) had once interviewed the scientist (Maximillian Schell)
Schell: Harry, still at the same paper?
Borgnine: Yes
Schell: Still on strike?