Dark Side of Heaven |
UK • 2008 • 93m •
  • Directed by: Robbie Moffat. • Starring: Suzanne Harbison, Rachel Rath, Paul Cassidy, Jon-Paul Gates, Helena Baker, Jill Bennett, Amelia Morris, Charlotte Radford, Lucia Serpini..  A four person crew, sent to bring back a mothballed ship parked at the back of Pluto, find themselves on their way to the edge of the Universe. Captainned by Sceptra, crewed by the child genious Kraz, the hopeless negotiator Caroli, and the narcissistic Wasat, the crew of the Bismillah find themselves heading out into space at ten times the speed of light. Unable to turn the ship aound, they resign themselves to spending the rest of their lives on a ship pre-programmmed to travel the thirteen billion light years needed to reach the end of the Univese. They soon find themselves at odds with one another in a mis-match that seems to have been pre-programmed to fail.
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Review:
The acting is amateurish something that one might find in a high school production as well as the quality of the set design and cinematography. There is a cheap feel to the whole film. The attempt at some deep substantive debate on religion and God in the 24th Century seems out of place this early in the film with more pressing matters to address. The awkward scene is seems either an act of desperation or an unsuccessful attempt to look sophisticated. As for the crew, it there's very little connection on screen between these characters almost as if they were randomly dropped into their roles each reading from a script with little direction and connectivity. This is sort of a mishmash or word salad that is until the script dictates introductions after supposedly the crew has been together for three years. The crew member reactions to various conflicts at times are inconsistent or hypocritical. All this occurs within the first ten minutes of the movie. Later on, more background information is revealed in an untimely and seemingly unreasonable order, information that the crew would have known years ago or information about the space vessel they are on. The unusual use of crew member video journal logs about themselves seem out of place, overly cute, something better presented through the unveiling of the story itself, instead of some supposedly new "innovative" film technique.
The crew discovers and gets excited over two comedic robotic vacuum cleaners something that the audience however might be less than enthused about. The movie descends into a parody of the old by now quaint and dated Doctor Who television series of the 1960s and 1970s. There really isn't anything that could be called a real engine room on the ship, though there is some sort of basement with a lot of pipes and a plastic skeleton. Towards the end of the movie there's even the use of something like unflattering flaky paper wiring stuff in place of fiber optics for connectors for running the ships engines.
The film seems to just wander from one scene to another scene. As a result, the movie drags without much drama or intrigue, nothing really to maintain the interest of an audience. The acting wobbles as the script has the performers almost having to make up motivation and situational presentations on the spot without real artistry. There's no sense of urgency as the crew are flung far beyond any reasonable form of rescue. There are even female costume changes without any apparent reason and there's even drinking on the job, improbably even over-indulgence along with lame dancing and karaoke that don't really have anything to do with the movie except to add unnecessary time to it.
The plot reveal is actually a decent one, but it seems that the crew commander isn't really that convincing and the drama like the rest of the crew as well as the audience is likely to deflate as well. Later another crew member attempts to offer up some explanation of why he's there and what's happening which offers some inkling of interest but the crew laughs him off. It's hard to take a movie seriously when it seems like neither the director or the cast do either. Somewhat predictably the second half of the movie becomes darker and there's an almost silent era feel in one a scene supposedly four years later now and the relationships between crew members become more convoluted like a silent movie soap opera or a movie being shot in a home movie format and in turns into a torturous melodrama using bluesy rock music as an accompaniment. The movie then takes another turn towards a pseudo-existentialist inquiry into forgiveness and God along with perhaps even a fake beard and a reading from an AA meeting experience.
By the end of the movie, its tone, its focus of storyline, and its emotional center of the characters actually begin to coalesce into a more somber, intriguing, and almost appealing script and performance by the actors. Even the music becomes more in sync and enhancing the movement towards the climax. But unfortunately, with an extended attempt to pay homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) with its light show that had some promising effects then it begins to repeat itself and gets lost in some blackhole of its own with a last quite unsatisfying scene to end the movie. The epic sci fi space adventure, Interstellar (2014) has nothing to worry about here.
Review by tabuno from the Internet Movie Database.
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