Review of Stargate (1994) by Copasetic S — 09 Nov 2009

It's not as bad as people make it out to be, but it's not as good as people make it out to be, either. There are two halves of this movie. In the first half, James Spader plays Dr. Jackson, a scientist who can uncover the Egyptian symbols that tell some kind of message.

By explaining the symbols, he opens up a time rift, which they refer to as the stargate. A military alliance, led by Kurt Russell as Captain O'Neill, takes Dr. Jackson through the gate and into a land of people who don't understand English.

It's funny that one of the team member's names is Kowalski. There always has to be a Kowalski in these movies. When they first get to the new portal, they're surrounded by sand. Dr. Jackson then finds a large animal, who happens to be domesticated, and tries to feed it a chocolate bar.

I kind of like the mindless fun of that scene. The team follows the animal into a town, also surrounded by sand, of people who don't understand English, but mistaken Dr. Jackson for a god. One of the funny scenes within this act has Dr.

Jackson doing the chicken dance to ask them if they have chicken. Later, Captain O'Neill is smoking (and I don't know why he would smoke in this situation), and when he tries to ask the people where Dr.

Jackson is, the people do the chicken dance in front of him. The humor in this movie kind of works, but it gets more mindless as we proceed. Captain O'Neill keeps claiming that Dr. Jackson is capable of sending everyone back home, but we never know how that's possible.

Then, an evil force comes down and attacks the land, and Jaye Davidson unconvincingly plays the leader of this force, who happens to be the god that Dr. Jackson was mistaken for. Djimon Hounsou also appears as one of the men of the evil force.

Once the lasers, explosions, and gunfire kicked in, I was in less belief in what was going on. Yet, the success of this movie at the box office allowed it to spawn a television franchise that continues to this day.

The performances in the movie stay strong throughout, and the visual effects are mediocre, but nothing adds up when we get to the ending. Stargate is a failure.