Supernova Review
by Michael Dequina (twotrey AT juno DOT com)February 4th, 2000
_Supernova_ (PG-13) no stars (out of ****)
Now, the movie so bad, not even Alan Smithee wanted his name on it. OK, perhaps that's really not the case--"Thomas Lee" was the agreed-upon pseudonym by director Walter Hill and MGM--but this long-delayed, much-tinkered-with sci-fi film is the year's first unqualified disaster. Sometime in the future, the crew of a space paramedic vessel answers a distress signal, picks up a mysterious stranger (Peter Facinelli), and, as the poster says, "all hell breaks loose" over an even more mysterious alien artifact the stranger brings along with him.
Perhaps the original script lived up to the promise of the intriguing premise because the film, as released, certainly doesn't. In the midst of the many re-edits the film underwent on the long road from shooting to screen, all sense of coherence was lost. For most of the running time, it's hard to understand or care about what's going on, and some of the ideas thought up in the 11th hour--such as the addition of a second zero-gravity sex scene, with James Spader and Angela Bassett's heads digitally attached to the bodies of the principals in the film's other weightless shag, Facinelli and Robin Tunney--just add to the confusion. As lost as the audience gets, no one in the auditorium can come close to the bewilderment exhibited by the cast. Spader is somnambulently morose; Bassett's earnest intensity seems ridiculously out of place for a piece of cheese such as this; the bland Facinelli exhibits no air of menace whatsoever; Lou Diamond Phillips, Wilson Cruz, and Robert Forster (who receives third billing for a five-minute part) simply go through the motions; and a clueless Tunney makes you wonder if she could possibly be the same person who gave such a bravura turn in 1998's _Niagara_Niagara_. I would call _Supernova_ this year's _Virus_, but that film was at least laughable. _Supernova_ just lies on the screen dead, boring as all hell.
Michael Dequina
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