The Alan Smithee Blogathon – Solar Crisis (1990)

This is the second of two posts for The Alan Smithee Blogathon being hosted by Steve of the Movie Movie Blog Blog.

Tnx for letting me participate!

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“My dad told me one thing that I’ll never forget: He said that you can be as smart and as brilliant as you like, but never let your ambitions grow bigger than your heart. ” – Mike Kelso

Number of Times Seen – 1 (29 Aug 2019)

Brief Synopsis – On a mission to save the planet from a solar flare, the crew of a spaceship must try to also deal with a traitor among their crew.

My Take on it – This is a film that I came across while looking for something to watch for this blogathon.

The premise actually sounded interesting and I was quite curious to try and discover why the director, Ricard Sarafian would chose to have his name removed from the final cut.

Unfortunately, despite having an intriguing idea for this story’s premise, the execution of it all is done extremely poorly and it comes across as being quite boring the entire way through.

What’s even more surprising here is the fact that the cast is superb yet they all feel completely wasted here.

Tim Matheson is a great actor and plays supporting roles really well, but isn’t really utilized well here in the lead role.

Charleston Heston, Corin Nemic, Peter Boyle and Jack Palance all have very prominent roles ere, yet none of the are able to show how talented they are as actors with the way this story is done which is much too chaotic for its own good.

The story comes across as being a bit too choppy throughout and is filled with too many plot holes that are never really explained properly.

The special effects are done quite poorly and they don’t find a way to make things look realistic enough which is quite a shame because this story has so much more potential than is actuated here.

Bottom Line – Really boring sci-fi film that actually has an interesting plot that just isn’t presented well enough. The cast is actually superb but they all feel completely wasted here. Matheson is underused in the lead and I’m surprised that Heston, Nemic, Boyle and Palance all agreed to be a part of this mess. The story is a bit too choppy and the various plot holes take so much away from being able to enjoy this film’s premise even more. The special effects are pretty mediocre and don’t help make this story more realistic looking which is quite a shame.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – When the film opened in Japan in 1990, it underperformed, so the producers extensively recut and reshot scenes to secure an American distributor. Richard C. Sarafian had his name removed from the credits and replaced with the Director’s Guild of America alias Alan Smithee. Sarafian’s son, Tedi Sarafian, who performed rewrites, was credited as Crispan Bolt. (From IMDB)

Rating – Razzie Worthy (4/10)