Film Review: Flying Saucer Rock N Roll (2006)

SYNOPSIS:

1957. A happy time of big fins, Rockabilly music and innocent teen love… Until the Martians come. In one night three teenagers have their world turned upside down when threatened by Zombie Beatniks, hopped up on space weed and bent on harvesting earth women for Martian demise.

Only our square hero Johnny Keen (Josh Duthie), with help from his beatnik friend, Maynard (Elan Freydenson), can defeat them. But can Johnny become “cool” enough in time to save his girl, Susie (Shanon Lark), and the day?! Drenched in Rockabilly music and greaser culture, “Flying Saucer Rock N Roll” is one swell ride from start to finish.

Featuring the talents of Jeffrey Wiessman (Back to the Future 2 & 3, twilight zone: the movie).

REVIEW:

Flying Saucer Rock’n’Roll is a 2006 horror film starring Ardal O’Hanlon. It’s directed by Enda Hughes. It’s a spoof of 50’s Sci-Fi.

The movie opens up with teens lost in the woods trying to look for aliens. They find a man and at first he tries to kill them, but they say that they’re lost and he lets them go to his house. He then tells them about his encounter with aliens back in the 50’s and why he’s still waiting for them.

How do we review a movie this bad? We’re not trying to be mean because we both love movies so much. Not just as critics, but as actors, too. We pour our heart and soul into every movie that we do and it hurts us to tear into a movie like this, it’s hard telling someone that their movie wasn’t very good, but that’s what we have to do, or at least try to do. So, bear with us as we try to get through this.

We would tell you more about the plot, but we don’t want you to waste your time. How do we rip into a movie this bad? The movie reminds us of a movie that Sarah was in, Scream Farm. (That’s because whoever smokes weed turns into zombies, but this comparison isn’t an insult on Scream Farm in any way, it just reminded us of that movie.)

We couldn’t stand this mind numbingly bad film. Sarah actually banged her head on a pillow. Sean almost started screaming. We just didn’t get it.

We read online that it was only twelve minutes, so we kept reminding ourselves that was all we had to endure, but twenty minutes into the film, we knew we were in for something much, much longer. AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

As far as the acting goes, we seem to disagree. Sarah believes that the actors were just doing what they were told, but Sean didn’t like the two leads. Whatever, it’s not the acting that made this a bad film, it was everything else. We felt like the film makers really didn’t care about what they were doing. It’s easy to review a movie that misses the mark but when one doesn’t put forth an effort where do you begin? Flying Saucer Rock’n’Roll is a movie of the quality one would expect from a student in a film class who was only taking the course to graduate on time. There is no inspiration, no finesse, and certainly no entertainment to be had. It arguably only qualifies as a movie because its running time falls within movie parameters.

If you’re not familiar with Manos: the Hands of Fate, it’s the movie most Mystery Science Theater fans recognize as the worst movie ever made, making Ed Wood look like a film pioneer. The director of the movie suggested after the horrendous premiere that the movie might work re-edited as a comedy. He of course would have been wrong. The movie would never work. The movie is only funny because it’s so horrible and it’s not aware of its atrociousness. When you make a lousy movie, admitting that you are aware of its awfulness just makes you look lazy. And it makes your audience irritable.

So it goes for Flying Saucer Rock’n’Roll. It’s a bad movie that knows it and doesn’t indicate caring. It’s a movie that wastes your time. The fact that the filmmakers make a movie so inadequate and then throw the label ‘comedy’ onto it is an insult to everyone in the business of comedy.

When you make a movie and ask an audience to devote the hour and then some of their time watching it, are you promising them anything? Are you guaranteeing a single moment of entertainment? Well, the harsh reality is no. Every audience enters every movie at their own risk. If an audience pays to see a movie that only flashes a snapshot of a rhinoceros for ninety minutes on the screen, do they deserve their money back? We believe not, as long as that was the movie the audience paid for. But as critics in a freedom of various mediums driven country we have the right to say that Flying Saucer Rock’n’Roll is a movie one level of quality below the prospective Rhinoceros Still Life film as the latter does not pretend to be a comedy.

Is that too mean? Tell you what, try sitting through this thing without fast forwarding and then we’ll be happy to indulge your opinion. Just remember, we’ve steered you away for your benefit. We HAD to endure this, you don’t.