Audience Member
cheezy special effects,and a goofy plot so there is a duplicate earth just on the other side of the sun???
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
02/24/23
Full Review
Audience Member
I watched this movie when I was a kid (on video in the 1980s) and it was a bit of a childhood favourite, but I couldn't remember some key points so watched it again just recently on the net. I'm disappointed, needless to say. The ending is 'too' convenient. All the evidence is destroyed in a very 'forced' accident. That being said, it's still a good movie and good science fiction, when you stop to think about it. The models are great and the casting and performances are very good, along with the music and set designs and the futuristic vision with all the nifty gadgets. All I can say about the movie philosophically is that the idea of a counter-earth is Pythagorean: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Earth.
Now as to the "point" the movie was trying to make.
My guess, and this is only a guess, is that its about trans-Atlantic relations. You have the European space agency, led by a British guy (Jason Webb ) but with all the funding coming from the French and the Germans (who are very miserly), and the Americans only pitching in when it becomes discovered the Soviets are spying on the new find of a tenth planet (in the same orbit as Earth, but on the opposite side of the sun). The super secret nature of the mission to this new planet also stops the public knowing about the startling discovery and so all the evidence of of the new planet being an opposite copy of Earth. (This is a theme in 2001 A Space Odyssey since the Americans keep the discovery of the monolith on the moon a secret and it was the mistrust and paranoia that Hal Suffered from that made him kill of the crew of the Discovery). Note that the last scene has Jason Webb, old and senile in his mansion, crashing into a mirror when he remembers the mirror image Earth, taking the secrets with him to the grave.
There's also the American astronaut hero (Colonel Glenn Ross) and his annoying country-girl wife. She makes fun of his manhood, not wanting to have kids from him, saying he's sterile because of radiation from space, only to discover she's taking birth control bills behind his back. I guess she wants a domesticated husband she can control. Contrast this to the lovely security controller from the European space agency, Lisa Hartmann, a hint that the Americans should stick it with Europe (under British leadership of course) if they want to win the Cold War and explore the solar system. It's this over commitment that gets the hero killed in the end, despite Lisa's warnings that he no longer owed Webb anything. Note the colour contrast too, with the hero's wife being a (wild) redhead and Lisa being a decent blonde!
On a final plus note works of art, whatever their quality, are always ageless, gaining relevance when you least expect it. Hence the curious situation the UK is faced with now with the vote on continued membership in the EU. If you can't lead the Europeans, be a member on your own terms, you go it alone. So the movie is, tragically, quite prophetic. (Notice also the scene in Portugal, making Southern Europe look poor, primitive, not unlike the situation today with the debt crisis Spain and Greece have found themselves in).
So, all in all, I'd say it's a good movie and has stood the test of time, but nothing of course compared to '2001' or 'Alien', although it's still better than Prometheus!
Hope you aren't offended, Emad El-Din Aysha, a freelance movie reviewer in Egypt:
http://www.madamasr.com/contributor-profile/emad-el-din-aysha
http://www.cairoscene.com/WriterProfile/1112
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/24/23
Full Review
Audience Member
SPOILERS AHEAD
About the most pointless film I've ever seen. After a slow start that seems to be competing with 2001 for showing all of space bureaucracy, though not nearly as effectively or to any purpose, the plot finally kicks in about halfway through the film. There's another planet directly opposite ours that always stays on the opposite side of the sun. A crew is sent to explore it and promptly crashes only to find out they're mysteriously back on Earth. Gosh, I wonder where they could actually be. Could it possibly be an identical but opposite Earth?
Admittedly this was made even more obvious since it was the plot of a Red Dwarf episode. It's a sad sad day when a TV comedy as silly as Red Dwarf can follow an idea through to its inevitable conclusion better than you can. Here the "differences" are idiotically simplistic and meaningless, like the fact that people are left-handed and write backwards. Hey, just like a mirror, get it? A mirror world? Isn't that clever! At least Red Dwarf added some interesting differences, like the fact that time was passing backwards. Worse yet we're expected to take this concept seriously here when five seconds' thought would show how dumb it is. And this mystery is the main conflict for the last forty minutes.
And then everybody dies.
No, I'm not even kidding about that. With no idea where to go once their boring revelation has been made they decide to simply kill off all the characters in an (admittedly pretty cool) explosion, except for one man who's shown years later in a retirement home recounting this story to a nurse. Note that this is the first time we have even a hint that this film is being told in flashback. Pathos? Mystery? Bah! And in a crowning moment of lameness that brings our film to its long overdue end, the old man sees his reflection in a mirror and charges at it in his wheelchair smashing into it and killing himself. Because it's a mirror world! Get it? Pretty clever, huh?
I've never seen a film try so hard to be intelligent and thought-provoking without even having one single creative idea. This film is a waste of celluloid. Not even bad enough to be charmingly awful, except in the final minutes. Avoid.
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
02/22/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Journey to the Far Side of the Sun isn't so much a "fun" movie as it is a "thinking man's" movie, but even in that regard it's dwarfed by other movies of its kind, both from its era and elsewhere along the timeline of cinema Science Fiction. It's a quality distraction, spinning a good, healthy yarn but one that's built more on interesting superficialities rather than complex emotion or intimate details of the human condition. Production design is strong for a movie of this size and scope, but the performances are flat, thanks largely to mechanical characters meant to convey information rather than realistically populate the film's world.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/28/23
Full Review
Audience Member
I Loved it! I think it has a Great story and effects! I LOVED IT!
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/21/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Boy this movie didn't age well. I loved it as a kid, but the totally placid pace of the plot makes for a really silly movie that adult me could figure out in a heartbeat.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/08/23
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