Tuesday, April 30, 2019

IRON SKY (2012) ***


For seventy years, the Nazis have been hiding out on the dark side of the moon waiting for a second chance to take over the world.  At last, they come down to Earth and make their play for world domination.  Finally realizing the Nazis are up to no good, Renate (Julia Dietze) leaves their ranks, and with the help of an American astronaut (Christopher Kirby), she tries to put a stop to the Fourth Reich.  

Iron Sky offers a fun blend of faux-Grindhouse lunacy with genuinely funny comedy and a handful of legitimately badass moments.  The premise is outlandish, but is enormously entertaining thanks to the game cast, cool special effects, and often pitch-perfect tone.  Not content on just making a silly little B picture, director Timo Vuorensola (who got his start making impressive homemade Star Trek fan films), cannily puts a little social commentary into the mix (like the scenes of The White House embracing Nazism), which keeps it from becoming yet another disposable would-be cult item.  

That’s not to say the film doesn’t know how to cut loose and have fun.  The scenes of Kirby being subjected to Aryanization is handled with equal parts satire and out-and-out hilarity.  Plus, it’s hard to resist any movie in which Udo Kier plays a Nazi.  Of course, a flick with this kind of wild imagination is sure to be uneven as hell.  However, its spunky spirit carries it over the clunkier parts, and the final act is a blast.  The fact that all this was created from an online crowdsourcing effort adds to its scrappy charm.

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