Supernova Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)January 20th, 2000
PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com
Supernova is one super mess. This sci-fi film is highly derivative, but not even of decent space flicks. It seems to have chosen only the bad ones to rip off. The story is simple: A spaceship picks up a really bad guy that tries to off everyone aboard. Typically, he can also heal his own injuries. And speaking of being able to heal your own injuries, here’s a person that can’t – Walter Hill. The Last Man Standing director asked that his name be taken off of the credits after the studio recut the film. Reportedly, Francis Ford Coppola reshot several scenes.
The spaceship in question is the Nightingale, an emergency rescue vessel that gets a five-day-old distress call from a mining colony located over 3,000 light years away. Thanks to choppy editing, the complete lack of character set-up and the weirdly similar hair colors/styles, the six people aboard the Nightingale are tough to tell apart. There’s Dr. Kaela Evers (Angela Bassett, Music of the Heart) – the black one – and Benj Sotomejor (Wilson Cruz, Party of Five) – the one with the beard. The other four all have short, black haircuts.
Rushing to the origin of the S.O.S. call, the Nightingale “jumps” into a high gravity field, where debris from a moon damages the craft’s engines, leaving a precious eleven-minute window between the point of recharge and being sucked into a giant sun. To make matters worse, the captain (Robert Forster, Psycho) doesn’t survive the jump and creepy recovering drug addict Nick Vanzant (James Spader, 2 Days in the Valley) takes control of the mission.
But Nick doesn’t seem nearly as disturbing as the person that placed the distress call. He’s Troy Larson (Peter Facinelli, Can’t Hardly Wait), the son of some renowned space baddie. He’s pure evil and makes everyone nervous, yet somehow is still able to nail the mouth-breathing white girl Danika Lund (Robin Tunney, End of Days), despite the fact that she’s considering parenthood with her fellow space cadet boyfriend Yerzy Penalosa (Lou Diamond Phillips, Bats). And the Nightingale picks up not only this space hitchhiker, but also a strange nine-dimensional substance that, of course, can wipe out humanity.
The laughable plot (or lack thereof) comes from David Campbell Wilson, whose only other screenwriting credit is Jeff Speakman’s martial arts extravaganza The Perfect Weapon. There are a couple of cool parts, like the exterior shots of the Nightingale, and the fact Danika and Yerzy had to fill out an application to be approved before they could consider bringing another life into the world. Hopefully in the future, it will be as complicated to make a bad film as it is to reproduce.
1:41 - PG-13 for sci-fi action violence, adult situations and enough near nudity to fend off an R rating
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