2001 a Space Travesty 2001 a Space Travesty Funny Scenes
Why? Oh, why??
When my nephew picked this out from the video store, I sighed but felt carefully optimistic. After we sat through an hour and a half of this unrelenting hell, I told him to leave and never return.
Let me give you an idea of just how bad this movie is. The end credits are literally the best part of the film. There are enough joke names and bits strewn about to make you crack a smile. The only problem is that to get there you have to slog through ninety minutes of the most unfunny slapstick I've ever had the displeasure of witnessing.
I'm serious: my thirteen-year-old nephew thought this movie was stupid. And it's rated R. What exactly is going on here? There's a zero gravity scene that's so painfully ridiculous that it sucked the humor not just from our living room, but adjoining apartments as well.
Believe me when I say I have done humanity a favor by viewing this film and warning the public to stay away. As bad as Rollerball is reputed to be, it can't be worse than this. All John McTiernan has to say is, "At least I didn't make 2001: A Space Travesty" and people will have to admit that he has a point. Had Albert Pyun directed this, people would have expected an apology.
Once more: I cannot stress how horrendous this movie is. Quit wasting time reading about this and go do something worthwhile, like churning butter or feeding the homeless. I consider this film one of the worst moments of my life thus far.
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Completely terrible. I feel sorry for Leslie Nielsen.
Watching this on television the other day, I instantly felt great remorse for star Leslie Nielsen. After the success of the "Naked Gun" series, he has been restricted to a career of playing the same character over...and over...and over....
This time, he is US Marshall "Dick" Dix (the first of many human anatomy puns/so-called "jokes"). I wonder how long it took them to come up with that one in the writing room.
"How about Agent Butt K. Isser?" "How about Agent T. Itz?" "No, wait guys! I've got it! Dick Dix! Haha we're comedic geniuses!" The budget is very obviously on the low end. Special effects are terrible. The film tries to lampoon the space travel segments of Kubrick's "2001" and fails miserably. Nielsen sucks food through a straw and can't manage to get it up the straw the whole way. Hahaha I chuckled all night thinking of that one! Or how about the woman in the back of the space shuttle who has huge breasts and manages to accidentally shed out of her clothes, which float around and slap Nielsen in the face? No, it couldn't have been the ugly fat woman whose clothes magically disappear...it's the busty blonde...I love Hollywood.
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Whatever Happened To Leslie Nielson?
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Leslie, Leslie, Leslie, what happened to the days when you asked us to stop calling you Shirley? To the days when you and that Priscilla whatever-her-last-name-is were laughing while walking out of a movie theater playing, "Platoon"? To the days when--
I guess you get the idea. It's not that Leslie Nielson doesn't have the acting ability; it's that the movie is probably the stupidest and worst comedy to come along in my lifetime. It broke dead even with Mystic River in the laughs department: none (unless you count after the movie, in which case Mystic River is way ahead. Academy Awards, ha!). I kept waiting for something funny to happen and the movie to suddenly go good, for everyone to pop out and go, "Hey! It was all just a joke! We only wanted you to think that the movie sucked because then the rest of the movie is great!"
Didn't happen. Avoid at all costs. I mean, I LOVE Leslie Nielson and it still sucked. Oh, well; at least he's not doing porn.
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Things are just getting worse and worse...
I'm curious: doesn't Leslie Nielsen (once a decent actor) read the scripts of the movies he's playing in anymore? It seems that nowadays all the writers or director of a movie need to do is tell Nielsen: Hey we're gonna make fun of some other movies, interested? And Nielsen would just sit there like, 'yeah'!
Instead of what the title would assume, 2001's main victim isn't A Space Odyssey but the more recent Men In Black. But, having said that, I cannot think of one decent joke relating to that movie. Nor can I tell here what the story is all about... it's got something to do with the president being swapped with a clone, or not, or whatever.
By lack of anything good to offer director Goldstein just throws some lusty women into it, but perhaps it says all that no well-known woman apparently would like to take up the job, so we have to do with an unknown French woman and an unknown German one...
In fact, I don't know of any reason why I should recommend this movie. Some lame jokes are just about OK, but nothing more than a 2/10 if you'd ask me.
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There are no heroes
This is like finding out that 6th grader who's always jumping over stuff with his mountainbike is lactose intolerant. Leslie Nielsen plays a guy called Dick Dix in this movie, and guess what, that's one of the better jokes. It's absolutely painful to see Leslie Nielsen in this movie, desperately looking for one bit of material that he could make work. The script centers mostly around slapstick that doesn't go over at all, but sometimes it takes a break from that and goes for some terrible political satire. This is a movie that gets a Clinton impersonator, and focuses on how he plays the saxophone. That's hard-hitting satire right there. Remember how Clinton always played the saxophone? I do, kinda. Later Nielsen narrates about a woman's finesse while she's beating everyone up. Comedy. Pavarotti also threatens to castrate a guy, the pope swears, the three tenors sing "In The Navy", did Germans write this or something? The type of comedy isn't even consistent, one time it's the aforementioned slapstick, then it's "satire", then suddenly the writers remembered they didn't have any in-jokes yet. So they put in like ten in a row. This thing sucks like you wouldn't believe.
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Glad to know that I just didn't understand the film
I kinda watched this film in a bad mood hoping for a good laugh, Leslie Neilson always makes me laugh. Especially parody movies, since I wasn't into 2001: A Space Odessey, I thought that this was a fun looking movie that would make fun of that film. Well, it turned into something pretty bad, I really couldn't find myself laughing at any of the situations, which is sad, because I find the stupidest situations very funny and I am easily amused. But I was curious if maybe it was my bad mood that killed the comedy for me, but I looked on IMDb before watching it again and it's not just me apparently.
Well, a some what take off of the Naked Gun series, only in outer space situations, Leslie is now Dick Dix, a clumsy detective that is sent to a planet called Vegan where he learns that President Clinton has been kidnapped and cloned and that the clone is on Earth with bad intentions for the world. Or as it seems, Dick actually plants the clone by accident and well... it just wasn't funny.
The jokes tried too hard and the story was just weak, it could have been something special, but unfortunately they took too much advantage of the Naked Gun series, which was pretty sad. I know Leslie can do much better and he has, so I forgive him. For those users who are looking for a recommendation here, I'm not going to give you one because like I said, I thought it was just me that didn't like the film, but I think the rating is enough warning in itself.
3/10
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The irony in the word "travesty" is correct...
Now I do like spoof movies, when they are funny and done right. There are some funny spoofs around, Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety and Loaded Weapon 1 for example, but the spoof genre has also had some excrement such as Disaster Movie and Epic Movie. 2001: A Space Travesty is not as bad as any of the worst of Friedberg and Seltzer. However, that is not saying much, 2001:A Space Travesty is still a terrible movie, being contrived, embarrassing and unfunny and it makes you think what possessed Leslie Nielson to take on this project.
As I said in the review title, the irony in the word "travesty" is correct. To be honest, while hardly clever or original the title is the best asset of this movie, as well as the end credits which was the only time in the entire movie when I cracked a smile, you know immediately there is something wrong when that is the case. The production values are cheap, with the costumes more reminiscent of fancy dress, shoddy camera work, dismal special effects and wobbly sets. The soundtrack is poorly thought out, In the Navy by The Three Tenors especially felt as though it was shoe horned in.
The story is predictable and almost a non-event, the pace didn't draw me in in any way and the direction was decidedly patchy. Also the characters are little more than stereotypes and caricatures and really bad ones at that with names that felt like poor Carry On lampoons. The acting is terrible, yes including from the talented Leslie Nielson. Nielson shows he can be funny as with Naked Gun and Airplane, which are comedy classics in my opinion, but he overacts and mugs shamelessly here which saddened me hugely. Everyone else either overplay, are bland or seem to be playing themselves. Worse is the humour, the film just isn't funny and is filled with the crude and vulgar kind of humour that doesn't come close to the inspired zaniness of the best of the spoof genre. The homages and references to sci-fis such as 2001:A Space Odyssey(one of my favourite films) are obvious and poorly thought out and the script is abysmal and didn't make me laugh one time.
In conclusion, not the worst of the genre but a mess all the same. 2/10 Bethany Cox
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Absolutely brilliant...
For years I have been suffering Insomnia but then I got my hands on the DVD of 2001 A Space Travesty... for weeks now I have been trying to watch the movie for more than fifteen minutes but I can't... I fall asleep every time. So this movie is absolutely brilliant... as a cure for insomnia!
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Leslie Nielsen in outer space
Marshal "Dick" Dix is a master of getting himself in awkward situations.He is told that the President of the United States of America, Bill Clinton, has been cloned.He is then sent to moon base called Vegan to safe the situation.He is helped by the attractive Cassandra Menage.2001: A Space Travesty (2000) is directed by Allan A. Goldstein.The film parodies 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars and so on.Leslie Nielsen is very funny as Dix.Ophélie Winter is fantastic as Menage.Peter Egan is very good as Dr. Griffin Pratt.Damian Mason does terrific job as Clinton.Ezio Greggio is great as Capt. Valentino DiPasquale.Michel Perron gives a great portrayal of Luciano Pavarotti.Same thing with Teresa Barnwell as Hillary Clinton.Recently we lost this great comedian, Leslie Nielsen.He could make any film slightly bit better.Without him this would be a much worse film.Many people call this a total turkey, but I'm not one of those people.It made me laugh a few times watching Leslie causing a riot in outer space and on Earth.The terrorist hostage situation in the beginning reminds a bit of The Naked Gun.And it's quite hilarious when he makes a mess at the villain's office, destroying his Vegan model and spreads paint all over the place.The Three Tenors at the end were hilarious.Leslie Nielsen, I raise my hat to thee.
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Perhaps Nielsen's lowest point
When Leslie Nielsen became a hot star overnight after "The Naked Gun", he didn't forget his Canadian origins, taking breaks from starring in big budget American movies to star in Canadian projects, this being one of them. But considering how awful those Canadian projects were, he would have been better off forgetting about loyalty to one's country and just choosing the best projects offered regardless of their country of origin. "2001: A Space Travesty" is not only his worst Canadian film, it's probably the worst movie in his career. There is not one single joke in the movie that makes you laugh, smile, or even smirk a little. It seems to have been written by people who just saw one "spoof" movie in their lives, and not having any sense of what's funny and what's overkill. And it's directed in a manner that has no proper comic timing, and often plays in a confusing manner that takes you several seconds to figure out just what happened on screen. It's no wonder no American distributor picked this up for theatrical release (and why it bombed so badly in its half-hearted Canadian theatrical release.) Only if you are REALLY wanting to see clean-cut Nielsen in an "R" rated movie... though I felt that the content of the movie deserved no more than a PG-13 rating.
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Atrocious and sad, but certainly not funny
Ewww! I saw this on a plane and was thunderstruck over how awful it was. The writing was virtually joke-free, and the direction incompetent. Even the sight gags--which are the easiest part of comedy to pull off, were lame and uninspired. Leslie Nielsen has really embarrassed himself here. In his successful Zucker Brothers spoofs, he's a master at playing ridiculous scenes completely straight, and thereby making the funny stuff work. Here he acts desperate. He mugs just to inject some life into the dreariness of it all, and, as other reviewers have mentioned, embarrasses himself mightily. If you want to see him in a movie devoid of intentional laughs, check out the original POSEIDON ADVENTURE. At least that flick has some inadvertent giggles.
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An unfortunate display of bad comedy writing
This is another spoof movie starring Leslie Nielsen, and I first heard of it a while ago, and knew it was obviously a sci-fi spoof. The title is derived from Stanley Kubrick's groundbreaking 1968 film, "2001: A Space Odyssey", though this film is certainly not entirely a parody of that one. I've seen that particular Kubrick movie several times, but was not as impressed with it during my last viewing, in January 2008. Still, the title of this 2000 comedy, "2001: A Space Travesty", was what brought it to my attention, since I obviously know where this title came from. I could see that this was not one of Nielsen's popular spoofs, but after a while, and only about 24 hours after first watching "Airplane!", an earlier parody film with Nielsen (and a MUCH better one) this week, I watched this despised sci-fi comedy. While I didn't find it to be QUITE as bad as many others have (maybe most other people who have seen in at some point in the past decade think it's worse than I do), I still thought it was a lousy attempt at comedy, so I can't defend it.
Marshall "Dick" Dix is a clumsy detective who is informed that the President of the United States (a nameless character, but obviously based on Bill Clinton) is being held captive on a moon base called Vegan and has been replaced by a clone! The detective is sent out of Earth's atmosphere to this moon base, on a mission to rescue the real president and find out who's responsible for the crime. He is accompanied on this mission by an officer named Cassandra Menage. Together, the two of them make it to Vegan, where they see that there are many beings around, both human and alien. Dix and Menage begin their inspection, which will obviously not be helped by Dix's clumsiness. After defeating the evil Dr. Griffin Pratt and his hoodlums in a fight, thanks largely to Menage's martial arts skills, the two inspectors escape from the moon and take the president with them. Back on Earth, Dix puts who he thinks is the real president back in the White House, but it turns out he has just replaced the real president with the clone! Even though the detective has messed up, it's still up to him to save his home planet, so the mission which started with a trip to the moon now continues on Earth!
"2001: A Space Odyssey" is obviously too slow paced for some viewers, and it did seem too slow to me the last time I watched it, but with only one viewing of "2001: A Space TRAVESTY", it seemed to me that it had the opposite problem, it was too fast! The direction seems so rushed and unfocused, and so does Leslie Nielsen's narration. Unfortunately, the problems certainly don't end here. The movie is full of very juvenile and unfunny humour, and since it's a comedy, that's its main problem. This already shows during the opening sequence and is featured in many other scenes, including the penis jokes about the main protagonist's name, Dix trying to use a spaceship toilet on the way to the moon just as the artificial gravity is turned off, a human on the moon coming out of the bathroom covered in alien waste, condoms which are found later in the film, etc. There are so many gags here which obviously took no comedic talent whatsoever to come up with! Not only does the toilet humour fail, so does the slapstick, with such occurrences as Dix accidentally making a huge mess during his inspection on Vegan. The gags generally seem like they were just thrown in with very little or no thought put into them. In addition to that, the film also seemed too noisy to me.
Unfortunately, with all this movie's flaws, it's most certainly a misfire. Leslie Nielsen's character here is like Lieutenant Frank Drebin, his character in the "Naked Gun" series (they're both clumsy detectives), but if you're a fan of any or all of those movies, that certainly doesn't mean you're guaranteed to like this later spoof. I remember one time when I was in high school, a student was banned from my school bus route after playing with a dildo during the ride home and giving the bus driver attitude when he told him to get off the bus. "2001: A Space Travesty" seems like it was written by hyperactive high school students like that guy! I'll admit, I did smile at times while watching this film, but this was VERY rare, and I never actually laughed. Not only did it not make me laugh, I may have had a slight headache while watching it, which the film didn't help. Yes, my rating for this sci-fi spoof is 4/10, which is higher than what seems to be the most popular rating for it, but I still don't like it. I even feel like 4/10 just might be too generous, and know that many people would believe that saying this rating is too generous is an understatement! If you've never watched this unpopular 2000 comedy, I strongly suggest you don't, whether you like Nielsen's comedy roles in general or not.
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Star Drek
Oh dear. Poor old Leslie Neilsen must be the only movie star who feels like the rest of us: every day he has to get up for work and do the same thing over and over and over again...
This so-called comedy is in the style of Neilsen's Naked Gun flicks, but the humour on display here is far removed from the inspired zaniness of that series of films. Neilsen's OK - he can do this kind of thing with his eyes shut, I imagine - but everything else about this film is bad. The female lead in this just about passes muster, but she only weighs about two stone, and the bad guy used to be Richard Briers' suave neighbour in Ever Decreasing Circles back in the 80s, so its just about impossible to see him as a real baddie.
The film itself doesn't really have much to do with 2001 - in fact it looks more like a take on the Men in Black flicks, although films of every genre are referenced throughout. It does get marginally better in the last 20 minutes when the three tenors give a spirited rendition of Village People's In the Navy, but by then only the strongest-willed of viewers will still be around.
Bottom line: Everyone involved in this should hang their heads in shame...
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Only funny to Aliens!
Leslie Nielsen is one of the most funniest comedians in Hollywood. He should've retired from acting with honour, before starring in this horrible unfunny film!
The jokes were childish, and I squirmed in my seat every time a joke was delivered. It's very sad Leslie has succumbed to this kind of silly nonsense, it was an embarrassment to watch.
I hope Mr Nielsen will go back to his hilarious roots and make more funny movies like the 'Naked Gun' trilogy, and 'Spy Hard'.
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Very disappointing
Warning: Spoilers
I went to the video rental store looking for a mindless comedy to watch this weekend. I picked up this video and I said to myself, "hey, this one stars Leslie Nielsen, so I'll bet it's funny". Well, I'm glad I didn't take myself up on that bet. This film is NOT funny - it's just plain silly. The schtick is almost all slapstick, juvenile sex jokes or scatological in nature. The words that would best describe this films humor would be sophomoric or inane. Oh, did I say sophomoric? Excuse me, but that would imply some level of sophistication and maturity. I should say FRESHMANESQUE. Leslie Nielsen hopefully doesn't need work this badly and should have said NO to this sorry waste of celluloid. I have to say that this is one of the worst comedies I've ever seen.
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Tedious and unfunny.
Leslie Nielsen got a new lease on his long career with the "Airplane" movies...which led to "Police Squad" and the "Police Squad" movies. All of these had a few things in common...excellent writing as well as the Abrams/Zucker alliance. In other words, Nielsen alone was NOT the reason these projects were so funny. This is sadly apparent in a string of films he made with hack writers/directors...resulting in crap films like "Repossessed", "Scary Movie IV" and this one, "2001: A Space Travesty". Watch it if you'd like....but don't expect it to be funny nor worth your time. And remember...it's not just my opinion...the film is #73 on IMDB's infamous Bottom 100 list!
So why didn't I enjoy this film? Well, to put it bluntly, the film was cheap and unfunny. Many of the special effects and costumes were dreadfully bad...especially at the beginning with the "2001" intro parody. Additionally, too often the movie went for cheap childish laughs instead of clever ones...relying too often on things such as farts, rip-away dresses and crude character names (such as Dick Dix and Miss Menage). By comparison, Mel Brooks' worst films seem like works of genius by comparison. Overall, a tedious and mostly unfunny film seemingly written by untalented chimps....very untalented ones.
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Under-rated but underwhelming Nielsen spoof
STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs
Marshall Richard 'Dick' Dix (Leslie Nielsen) is an appropriately bumbling secret agent who's assigned the task of travelling to the planet Phaebon with Agent Menage (Ophelie Winter) and rescuing the president (Damien Masson) who's been kidnapped by some intergalactic villains.Cue various mishaps and comical encounters.
This Nielsen spoof was originally released in 2000,but it's arrived on these shores four years later.I would have thought there'd be a good opportunity to release it on the back of Nielsen's appearance in the theatrically released Scary Movie 3,but,alas,there you go.It's had a whole lot of bad press,consistent bad reviews and making it,at one point,to a place no lower than #20 at one point on IMDB's very own bottom 100.
I don't want to complain too much of the lengthy wait I've had to endure to watch 2001:A Space Travesty though.As captain Gilder said to Trilling in Under Siege 2,"good things come to those who wait."Also,though quite far from a good thing,2001 has not been worthy of all it's negative publicity.I'm sure if Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck had been headbilling it,it would have got a cinema release by now.
There were some very funny moments,but the rambling,increasingly predictable script made them emerge as rather few and far between.It's a bit too long as well and the plot begins to lack much in the way of cohision.The desperation is more evident with the constant bombardment of obvious and rather gratuitous sexually explicit jokes and yet another resurgence of that 'hidden birthmark' joke,stolen from Nielsen's own Naked Gun 2 and recently used in Rowan Atkinson's Johnny English.But it's a fairly slick presentation,just managing to over-shadow the see-through production values,and if it just manages to make you laugh enough,is just worth the price.And the duration.
For the title it's spoofing,though,it really doesn't send that particular film up much.And that's one of the things I was really looking forward to it for.**
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Inconsistent But Nowhere As Bad As Is Made Out
Time for another cliché to raise its ugly head and that is - Did I see the same movie ? I read a few of the comments on this page just before I sat down to watch 2001 A SPACE TRAVESTY and feared the worst . After spending an hour and a half of my life watching it I feel some people have overreacted to it . Okay it's certainly not a comedy masterwork but neither is it the cinematic atrocity some people are claiming
Certainly the opening sequence is very tough going , so much so I can't help thinking the people pouring vitriolic hatred on the movie actually gave up on it at this point . To say the film could only get better at this point is to state the obvious but 2001 does indeed improve down to the fact that Leslie Neilson may be playing a character called Richard " Dick " Dix but is detective Frank Drebin in everything but name and the introductory sequence where Dick ends a hostage crisis in his own unintentional style is fairly amusing and leaves one hoping for more of the same similar to the style of THE NAKED GUN movies
This sums up the problem with 2001 and that is that is it sustain the laughs and is very patchy . There's a long segment set on a moonbase and it really belongs in another film as the audience anticipates the sort of antics we'd expect from Frank Drebin . Instead of the sharp , witty , snappy one liners we more often than not get jokes that are stretched out beyond their natural length , most blatantly the three tenors having a Village People routine which gives the impression the writers aren't trying too hard
In summary 2001 A SPACE TRAVESTY isn't a classic Leslie Neilson comedy but contained enough jokes to bring the occasional wry smile to my face . Everyone else on this page seems to hate it but if you genuinely think this is a bad movie starring Neilson I suggest you watch both REPOSSEED and DEAD AND LOVING IT which really were so bad as to be unwatchable
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Stunningly bad space spoof with Leslie Nielsen
Released in 2000, "2001: A Space Travesty" spoofs space shows/movies and anything else it feels like making fun of, like politicians and musicians (e.g. "Bill Clinton" is one of the characters). Leslie Nielsen stars as a Frank Drebin-like character and the movie shoots for the goofy humor of The Naked Gun trilogy, but fails. With the wealth of material at its disposal, I don't know how this movie could've gone so wrong, but it's rarely funny and often downright bad; and this is coming from someone who enjoys goofy humor a la The Naked Gun. It doesn't help that the 2-3 most prominent women aren't sexy; to me, at least. Worse, the sex-oriented jokes are more gross and vulgar than funny. Thankfully, the third act is better than the first two, but that can't save it.
The film is overlong at 99 minutes.
GRADE: D+
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I am left speechless to describe how BAD this is..
To say that a movie is BAD is a disappointing thing. To say that a movie made one convulse with cringing and embarrassment is even more.
There are many problems with this movie, here's my short list:
1- Too much frenetic camera work and too much static camera work. Which is to say also that the editing was just as criminal.
2- Too many jokes piled on top of each other. Movies of this genre - the Spoof, are not a wild ride down the Colorado River.
They must have enough subtlety to deliver each joke, pun, sight gag as a surprise and not as the central point of each shot or scene.
What made earlier NIELSEN spoofs so successful was not its excesses but the way that you didn't know where the next joke was coming from.
One scene in a disco was so badly conceived because it had no direction. It had so so very many "jokes" piled on top of each other, the shock value of each new attempt at comedy was not allowed to breathe. In two words: NO TIMING.
3- Too many gimmicky STAR CLONES.
Oh what Frank Capra or Preston Sturges could have done with HALF as many people! It boggles the mind.
I second the motion that this movie should be able to receive a NEGATIVE 10 Rating. More than what are classically called BAD films, this has to rank among the worst only because of the embarrassment of riches which lay waste within its starving potentialities.
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Some slick packaging around an uninspired, embarrassing mess
I found this movie in a bin of bargain-basement, second-hand videos. I seem to have a weakness for "spoofs." I liked the first Naked Gun (even though the cop sidekicks were better cast on TV's Police Squad), and rode out the two disappointing sequels. I tried but never got into the Airplane movies. I stuck with the increasingly thin, sophomoric Austin Powers films. I made it through Loaded Weapon, Scream, three Scary Movies, Not Another Teen Movie, and a series of Leslie Nielsen clunkers so lame that I did not think it could sink any lower - Repossessed; Dracula: Dead and Loving It; Spy Hard; Wrongfully Accused; and Mr. Magoo (by then, all a well-known film critic who had once praised Nielsen's comic talents had to say about him was that he was the "bozo du jour"). But Spy Hard is a masterpiece compared to "Travesty."
"Travesty" has enough budget and production values to not quite give away by its looks alone how bad a film it really is. The name of Nielsen's character -- Dick Dix -- is catchy (certainly better than Spy Hard's weak "Dick Steele, Agent WD-40"). Early on, there are a couple of laugh-out-loud moments: Dix being snapped back and forth from front to back of a space shuttle by the suspenders of his pants snagged on a seat, sending him flying head-first into a levitating anvil; and Dix crushed on top of someone and undergoing various contortions during a gravity-defying drop in a high-speed space elevator.
But the movie is a thin, slow-paced, forced, brain-dead mess. It does not even get Dix into space until it runs through an infantile "history of the universe" sequence (featuring the constellation "stifficus" and takeoffs on a "white dwarf," a "moon," and "aliens" (shots of Michael Jackson and Dennis Rodman)) and scenes that play like rejects from a bad Naked Gun movie. Dix is a "Marshal" with the "International Security Force" (whatever that is). His car radio is conveniently tuned to the local police frequency, and he butts in on a hostage situation at a fast-food joint. He goes from there to more unfunny, chaotic scenes at the "bull pen" of his D.C.-area headquarters.
You expect things to pick up when Dix is sent to a moonbase for humans and aliens to investigate a report that an evil doctor there is cloning and replacing world leaders. But almost immediately, it becomes clear that the film has nothing interesting to do in space. It sags and drags.
This is partly because of a cut-rate, no-name supporting cast which has zero rapport with Nielsen. The worst are a laid-back, jive-talking black dude and a hammy, low-rent, Italian-version Inspector Clouseau, neither of whom manage a single funny or even understandable line or action in the entire movie; and two unremarkable novice actresses who go through the motions with little or no apparent acting skill or characters to play (reviews that slobber over them need to get a life -- or take a look at any random actress starring in any major movie).
It is also because of crude, childish, labored, unfocused, rip-off gags that smother anything remotely funny. For example, Dix chases around after and makes a disgusting mess of the doctor's toupee; Dix tracks ink all over the white carpet and destroys an office; Dix gets hands and feet stuck on a door bearing a note written in glue; and so on. A disco scene is another loud, chaotic waste of time.
The movie even ruins the elevator scene by having Dix and the woman remain entangled long after the doors open, with him standing up and holding her upside down, facing him, so that she has to peer through his legs and he gets a "fart" in the face. The movie also sinks to this kind of "comedy" in the space shuttle bathroom; in sloppy mispronunciations by a French security guard ("backstage p*ss"; "no one will get p*ssed"; to musician, "you can blow your instrument with confidence knowing I will be here holding the f*rt"); and in the simple-minded gimmick, after the end credits roll, of disembodied sound effects with captions. None of this has anything to do with satire about space movies or anything else. It is cheap, junk "humor."
By the time Dix returns to Earth, the film has become unwatchable. What feels like the movie's last half, or more, slogs through desperate, disorganized, clumsy, endlessly drawn-out scenes at a Paris opera house, before a "world leaders' conference." Dix and his cohorts (wearing stupid, unfunny "disguises") and the villains take forever to reach and then fight in the control room for the stage, trying to keep their version of the U.S. President in place.
Along the way are senseless, tasteless jokes (Pavarotti's condoms?!?); quick cuts to bad impersonations of dignitaries or pop stars in the audience (the Pope is the worst); lame, obvious humor about the Clintons (he acts like a good-ol'-boy boor and she rolls her eyes); and frantic, loud, boring antics backstage and on stage. Cutaways to the increasingly embarrassing supporting cast and material, which by now have the movie in near-total meltdown, ruin an already forced bid for laughs with the "Three Tenors" singing "In the Navy." The movie limps to an end with a strained, tacked-on scene at a restaurant where one of the young women, who the movie never bothers to develop as a love interest, dines with Dix, who for no reason makes a mess.
Mindless, goofy, silly movies can be fun. But calling something a "parody," "satire," or "spoof" hardly makes it an automatic laugh riot. And any feeble effort that comes along is not worth recommending with the lazy, sloppy excuse "come on, this is supposed to be bad." It is no fun to watch a stand-up comedian die on stage, much less to watch it for 100 minutes. This pretty much sums up how it feels to watch "Travesty."
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"How funny!", I thought this morning. But I wasn't thinking of this movie.
"Hey, it's 2001... let's make a comedy with this date in title!" thought the makers of "Space Travesty". "Let's make it a comedy, too, and let's have Leslie Nielsen in it. Plot? What plot?!? We'll throw in some jokes and glue them together with scenes showing Leslie Nielsen making faces!"... and so they did. Oh dear. You know this movie is awful already before seeing it - and that's because its trailer does not contain a single funny scene. As you probably know, movies of this sort put all their good jokes in their trailers (vide: Mel Brooks's Dracula). The trailer for this one has nothing funny in it, and that is not because the makers kept the good jokes for the movie itself but because they don't even have one funny gag to show - the whole "film" consists of some jokes older than the Pacific, plenty of awful "sex 'n' barf" kind of "humor", and a lot of dreadful, unimaginative, uninspired, boring, inane and inept attempts at a parody ("SAL! oh, that's Italian, and there's that music from GODFATHER playing, oh how funny!"). I don't blame Leslie Nielsen for this dreck - the writer and director (or, I should say, the "writer" and the "director") are to blame for it - but it's sad to think that he hasn't appeared in a movie worth watching since "The Naked Gun 2 1/2"...
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Among Leslie Nielsen's worst movies
Despite Leslie Nielsen began as a movie actor in the mid-1950s he didn't become widely recognized until when he did the AIRPLANE and NAKED GUN movies. These movies are true classics of the spoof genre, and mostly because they were cleverly written, well acted and with likeable characters all around. Unfortunately this didn't continued as the years passed because Nielsen ended up appearing in wretched movies badly written/acted/directed like REPOSSESSED, DRACULA DEAD AND LOVING IT and this one. If you watch it do it, but don't expect it to be a masterpiece or a comedy of the level of NAKED GUN. And I am not the only that hated it remember... the movie is currently number #96 on IMDB's everchanging Bottom 100 - the list of the 100 lowest rated major releases of all time.
So why the movie is easy to hate? Well, first of all, it's unfunny. Many of the jokes are crude and the costumes' design and the sets are incredibly bad. Plus, for most of its time the movie went for cheap and annoying jokes such as farts, revealing dresses and the dumbest characters' names you can find (such as Richard Dick Dix or Miss Menage). And Ezio Greggio, despite SILENCE OF THE HAMS bombed, didn't learned his lesson of leaving acting to real actors!
Overall a dumb and unfunny movie that looks like it was made with a 500$ dollar budget, horrible sets and a director that seemed very clueless.
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A "Travesty" Indeed!
Oh how the almost mighty have fallen. Leslie Nielsen may not be regarded as a comedic genius by anyone's standards, but he has made some stupid, but enjoyable films in his career. In contrast, his latest, "2001: A Space Travesty", is just stupid, a very poor rehash of Leslie Nielsen's "Naked Gun" series and character with dated attempts of humor that just aren't funny.
Leslie Nielsen is Richard Dick Dix, a total rip-off of his Lt. Frank Drebin, his most well-known role from "Police Squad!" and the "Naked Gun" series. As his name and the film's R rating already tell, instead of going for light-hearted stupid slapstick comedy a la most of Nielsen's other films, "2001: AST" attempts light-hearted stupid sexual comedy. This in itself wouldn't be a bad thing if it didn't fail so miserably at it. There is a ton of crude toilet and sexual humor, and none of it is funny to anyone over the age of 10 (and the majority of it wouldn't be funny to anyone under that age either). Nielsen's trademark straight delivery of absurd lines and situations is still present, but the material isn't by any means even remotely funny so it doesn't work.
A good portion of the material is not only unfunny, but dated as well. A Bill Clinton impersonator playing the President is OK considering production of the film began in 2000 and probably before the new election, but scenes near the end featuring "celebrities" include impersonations of the Three Tenors, Madonna, Prince, and Hulk Hogan. This dated nature can also apply to the jokes; in reality they are no different than those in "Naked Gun", except that the last film in that series was made almost ten years ago, and sex-based humor has moved on, which would explain why it's just not funny. Director Allan Goldstein and writer Alan Shearman have no expertise in comedy to notice or help matters much. Shearman in particular hasn't written a comedy since 1990, which further explains the dated feel of the film.
Perhaps if this film had been released 10-15 years ago it would be funny. I would still be a child who would appreciate the attempts at toilet humor, and lewd sexual comedy was still on this level. The dated "celebrity" in-jokes may have even made sense. Even then, however, this film would still be known as the worst "Naked Gun" film. Released today, my ideas of comedy have matured much past this simple childish toilet humor, the dated jokes make no sense, and it's just terrible, by far one of the worst films I have ever seen.
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A tired retread of an aging role
I quite honestly could not watch much of this movie. I did have it playing all the way to the credits, just to be fair however.
What completely turned me off of it was that the type of humor that was so well crafted into airplane and the first two naked gun movies has unfortunately been made so blatantly vulgar by whoever directed this film that it is not funny. You could watch the same scene in Mr. Neilson's earlier films 3 and 4 times and find a new joke every time.
This waste of celluloid wants to be risqué, but is not willing to deal with adult humor at an honest level. This 'suggestive' humor is not all that funny since the whole point of a dirty joke is to be dirty. The rest of the humor is not complex enough to warrent more than five minutes of attention.
On the positive side- production value is adequate. The film does not appear to be a bargain budget piece that one would see as a Sci-Fi channel original's series.
Bottom line:
Unless you have an unnatural obsession for Leslie Neilson films- skip this one.
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Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0157262/reviews
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