Customer Reviews

Savage Planet

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

For those of you who have sat through more than one Sci-fi Channel movie, this is more of the same. Trash.

For those of you who have yet to view a Sci-Fi Channel movie, I will explain to you why they are bad. (including Savage Planet)

The dialog in Savage Planet comes off as if it were written by a fourth grader. It is clunky, awkward, cliche and trite. The special effects in Savage Planet look like they were put together by the fourth grader's computer nerd buddy. The effects are hokey, and look like they were produced for a 1992 video game.

And the acting? Horrendous. Few actors in Savage Planet seem capable of expressing anything with feeling, conviction, or with a genuine tone. In addition, the casting is brutally bad, and the script is worse.

Not much to see here. Please do not waste your money on this train wreck. And if you need to see for yourself, rent before you buy.

It is rare that I am at a loss for words, but in attempting to review this "movie" I must admit that I cannot summon up adjectives of suitable negativity to accurately convey my disgust. I will try. Imagine the excrutiating boredom of watching a small group of amateurish actors wander aimlessly in the woods for at least 90 minutes, uttering trite phrases. Those familiar with one of the most famous worst-movies-of-all-time, Robot Monster, will fondly recall cave scenes in which some joker (aptly named Ro-Man) wearing a moth-eaten gorilla suit and a diving helmet on his head menaced a diminishing group of clueless actors. It couldn't get worse than this, could it? Well, how about substituting stock footage of a growling grizzly bear as your scary monster, instead of good old Ro-Man? No one could possibly be this silly, you would reply. And I would have agreed, until I witnessed the nightmare that is Savage Planet.

This movie is an utter, abject failure, and the scope of its failure boggles the mind. Indeed, one of the tag phrases offered by Amazon at the bottom of the review page for this movie is "crappy sci-fi". Amen.

Whenever confronted by a truly execrable production such as this, my common sense tells me that everyone involved must, at some time, have realized that they were participating in something totally devoid of any artistic merit...something really, really awful. How could they keep a straight face? Did they really need money this badly? Sadly, the real horror here is not that a group of reasonably normal, intelligent people got together to create this mess, but that a small group of reasonably normal, intelligent people like you and I watched it.

A group of intrepid explorers travel across the galaxy to an alien world to discover grizzly bears(?!!). Horrible acting, an idiotic script, and ludicrous special effects combine to make this the cinematic equivalent of bear droppings.

There's nothing quite like watching Grizzly Rage, a subpar bear-monster flick that doesn't have any special effects budget to speak of, and then watching Savage Planet, a subpar bear-monster flick that has terrible special effects. Two awful bear movies in a row? The programmers at the Syfy channel clearly have a sense of humor.

Oh, Savage Planet may sound like an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel, complete with bare (Bear? Ha-ha) chested he-men, multi-armed aliens, and gorgeous maidens waiting to be saved. But that level of awesomeness is not for this movie. No, instead we get bears.

Not just any bears, mind you. There's a great Discovery channel special about how prehistoric man was nearly wiped out by the arctodus simus, or short-faced bear, a terrifying 13 ft. long, 1.2-ton monstrosity that was primarily carnivorous. Can you imagine a planet filled with these things - a planet that, according to the fossil records, would be a lot like prehistoric earth? All you would need is some marines with heavy weapons and you've got an awesome movie.

Yes, I can imagine such a movie, and I will have to keep on imagining it because Savage Planet has nothing awesome about it.

What it does have is stock footage of bears, such poor CGI that the bears appear to be sliding in place, a guy wearing bear claws gloves, and sped up stock footage of bears. The sped up stock footage is the real howler. A bear shuffling along menacingly is terrifying because you really could encounter one; a bear shuffling along at high-speed invokes all the terror of encountering Yogi Bear.

Savage Planet's plot, such as it is, takes place in the future. The future is running out of oxygen, but fortunately has developed teleportation. It has never occurred to anyone that teleportation technology means you could conceivably teleport oxygen off of the Savage Planet to Earth. But that's a minor quibble, because the villain's real plan is revealed in the first five minutes...regenerating phosphorescent goo!

The means in which this is revealed is breathtaking in its abrupt yet thorough presentation: Boy meets girl (YAY!). Girl accidentally hacks boy's hand off with machete (BOO!). Boy falls down pit (BOOOOO!). Boy's spurting stump lands in green goo (YAY?). Boy's hand regenerates (YAY!). Boy gets eaten by bear (BOOHOO!).

Limb-tearing bears. Regenerative goo. You can probably guess how this movie ends. But whatever you imagine is much, much better than this bear of a movie.

Yep, I know better. The cheesy Sci-Fi Channel (no, I'm not going to use their nauseating new spelling) movies have 20 year old CGI quality, cookie cutter scripts that come from a horribly disfigured cookie cutter, and typically they stick a star in there who mails in the performance.

OK, so I like Sean Patrick Flannery. They got me. But not for long.

In a future Earth where everyone must wear breathing masks just to survive, the richest businessman on the planet funds a teleporter project which takes a team (including the richest businessman on the planet) to a pristine world 20 light years away. There they encounter giant grizzly bears ... yes ... giant grizzly bears. Evidently the CGI budget didn't stretch to create an actual alien monster. The bears are evidently the only animal life on that world, since we are never shown anything else. But the bears are shy, they generally only get you if you get separated from the group. LOL

However, when an expedition member was killed and another expedition member accepted the news over the radio emotionlessly, in a monotone, I switched to a rerun of Return of the Jedi on Spike. I know how this ends. SPF and the last surviving female expedition member will survive to return to their hellish home. The richest businessman on the planet will be killed by a giant bear in some gross fashion. If they were kind to him, he'll die nobly helping to save others. However, probably he'll do something arrogant and stupid that puts him in the way of a giant bear. I don't really care which it is, because I've just watched Han Solo thaw out of the carbonite, and Luke is entering Jabba's fortress. Leia is sleeping in front of Jabba in her tiny slave girl bikini. Life is good. :-)

If I won't watch this movie for free, guess how many dollars I recommend you spend on it.

Was the production team limited to one take per scene...because this is what it felt like. Actors late on cues, with disingenuous reactions, and unable to convey a sense of urgency for what was supposed to be a helpless situation on planet, 20,000 light years away from Earth.

The actors might as well have held the script in their hands while delivering the lines, because that's what it felt like...unpassionate reading...The tone of the discussions was more alike sports talk over morning coffee while the backstory reminded me of a junior high crushfest more than anything else with poor excuse for sexual tension between actors who obviously had to chemistry...

But alas, I thought to myself, sci-fi...which I love - I might be able to overlook this for cool special effects...forget it. The extent of the special effects were a combination of:
1. National Geographic / Animal Planet snippets inserted awkwardly between shots
2. Some guy with a $15 Halloween costume...the ones that go on clearance after Halloweeen
3. Computer generated overlays with the actor moving behind the effect

Savage Planet is actually based on a great concept that was shallowly and "savagely" executed. Drunk and watching with friends...maybe, but then there's a fine line between intentionally making a parody of a B movie and actually aspiring to be a B movie...Savage Planet does the latter.

As much as I appreciate Sean Patrick Flanery, this was so bad you almost have to see it just to understand how bad it is. Even for cheap sci fi shlock, it fails miserably. It pops up on the SyFy Channel occasionally. Wait for it, don't buy.

I bought this movie because I like Sean Patrick Flanery, but I have to say the storyline is lame and not scary at all. The premise of the story is that the earth is dying, yet again, and there is another planet similiar to earth and they send SEan as well as other people to check out the planet. The so called monsters are grizzly bears from like the prehistoric times. Whatever! It wasn't bad, but truly it's not worth buying. I think this movie was probably on the sci fi channel. Save your money.

I do not understand all of the negative reviews. Sure this is shlock, sure it's poorly written, sure it's horrible dialogue, and certainly very very bad acting. It's Sci Fi. It's what we have come to expect. Dish Network magazine did a recent article on how this crap has become gold for the Sci Fi Channel or as it's better known Syfy these days. However, it's also mindless entertainment, what we have come to expect, what we have come to see. You should not waste time watching this if you expect to see a quality movie. You purposely watch this to see the shlock. It is what it is guys. And, for what it is, it's one of the very best. Now about those bears, a reviewer said bears, not quite true, in true Sci Fi spirit, these are "Deadly giant man eating bears". Quite different from just bears, and the concept is that they would be coming to an earthlike planet that would sustain earthlike and earthly life. So, of course there are going to be creatures that evolved differently, in this case the bears. Personally, I am not only hoping for a sequel but highly recommending this movie to all like myself who enjoy and love not just the A movie, nor the B movie, but the true shlock I call the C movie.

wasitchu