Review of Barbarella (1968) by William D — 29 Oct 2011
I yield to no one in my appreciation for soft-core porn and self-consciously "bad" cinema. Thus I was eager finally to see "Barbarella," which came out in October of 1968, but which I somehow never saw all these years. I was expecting good, fun trash, and instead I got a dorky, un-funny, un-sexy snooze-fest, and some of the worst music ever recorded for the cinema.
The score seems to have been put together by the lounge singer Tom Jones in his tackiest phase. Jones seems also to have directed. What a catastrophic failure "Barbarella" is. This is my first Roger Vadim film, and it may be my last.
As an example of self-consciously "bad" cinema that I like: John Waters' early stuff. Waters, who was starting to make films around 1968, has vastly more imagination than Vadim had. Vadim died in 2000, incidentally.
This review of Barbarella (1968) was written by William D on 29 Oct 2011.
Barbarella has generally received mixed reviews.
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