I use netflix a lot. It’s a convenient website, chock full of TV shows that everyone I know loves to talk about, like Arrested Development and Breaking Bad and Arthur (15 seasons, man!), which I still need to catch up on at some point. There are also movies on it, which happens to be relevant in this case. Perhaps too many movies. Oftentimes when it comes to deciding on a film to view, not necessarily to write about, just to view, I become paralyzed by indecision. The fear of having too many options is what I imagine is the quintessential First World problem, but it’s happened to be a few times. You can’t let fear rule your life though, especially not on some movie shit, so I throw caution to the wind, strap my ass in, and just watch a fucking film.
Here’s what I ended up with.
The American Astronaut begins with our hero, astronaut and space adventurer Samuel Curtis (Cory McAbee), landing his space-train outside the Ceres Crossroads bar. Humanity, in this strange future or maybe past, has spread out amongst the solar system, building strange new societies in the process. Venus has become a planet of all women (and the only time you actually see women in the film) for example, while Saturn has transformed into an all male slave planet, and never the twain shall meet. Ceres Crossroads is located on a rock on the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It’s just a bar.
After delivering a cat to the bar owner, getting a picture of him taking a shit, and winning a dance contest with his friend the Blueberry Pirate, Samuel Curtis is roped into series of incredibly creepy interplanetary trades. Johnny R, the only man on Venus, has recently passed away, and his relatives want his remains returned to Earth. The Venusians, being a bunch of horny bitches, won’t part with Johnny’s body until they get a hot young replacement. Saturn happens to have such a replacement, The Boy Who Saw the Breast, but they won’t part with him unless they get a real life girl for their bizarre sexual bullshit. So Sam has to trade a real life girl he got from the bar owner in exchange for the cat to the Saturnians to get The Boy Who Saw the Breast to trade to the Venusians in order to get Johnny R’s body so he can get it back to Earth. This is all explained to you at the beginning of the movie, in case you were wondering exactly how the movie is supposed to play out I guess.
Everything’s not coming up roses, however, as Sam is being pursued by the villainous Professor Hess (Rocco Sisto), who may or may not actually be a professor. He’s the Joker to Sam’s Batman, with a double helping of that subtly implied sexual tension they’ve got going on. Armed with a good old fashioned disintegrator pistol, he only kills people that he has no reason to kill, so don’t mess with him. Or do mess with him, because then he’d have a reason to kill you, and thus wouldn’t kill you. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.
The American Astronaut is also a bit of a musical as well, because B-movie style space western wasn’t good enough. The music is done by the Billy Nayer Show, fronted by lead actor and director Cory McAbee, because having your names in the credits twice isn’t enough for some people. I enjoy the the score, it sounds exactly like a crazy space western should sound like, a bit of Butthole Surfers maybe, perhaps some Primus style, nice to listen to. The musical numbers are interesting as well (who doesn’t love songs about girls with glass vaginas?), but they feel short to the point that I wonder why they included them at all.
The main positive this movie’s got going for it are the visuals. I mentioned B-movie style previously, and that’s definitely true, specifically the golden age sci-fi and film serials from the 50s, perhaps mixed with bit of the ol’ steampunk for good measure. I love the way that McAbee show space travels by using still photographs of Sam’s space train interacting with objects in the solar system, a small thing that stuck with me for some reason. McAbee uses shadow real well too in my opinion, especially in the space barn scene (to clarify, it’s a barn in space. Not to insult the writer, but you could turn the volume all the way down, and I could enjoy it all the same.
Surreal is the right term for this movie. ‘Lynchian’ was being bounced around at the beginning, but I’ve trotted out the David Lynch comparison for ‘strange dreamlike films’ too often for my tastes. About 7/10 times it hits the mark and you’re transported into this bizarre world of space trains and also space barns, and then something comes along that fucks it up. For example, there’s a scene near the beginning of the film at the Ceres Crossroads where a bar patron is warming up the fellas for the upcoming dance contest. Having previously been shown as a joke teller, he launches into a ‘Hertz Donut’ bit: a man performing cruel acts throughout his life, with the punchline being “Hertz Donut?” each time. I can see what they were trying to do, trying to build up that sense of unease with this guy’s monotone delivery of a rambling joke while the audience flips from brooding silence to side-splitting laughter a few times, and that it could have worked. But it doesn’t, at least for me. Even if it was meant to be an overly long and pointless, which it might’ve been, for the purpose of building atmosphere, that does not suddenly make it a good scene. My reaction isn’t so much “Wow, this is one wacky joke this guy’s tellin’, have I somehow gone beyond the looking glass?” as it is “Ugh, time to check if TBFP have uploaded any new videos”.
I feel like this movie is very light, which might be the surrealism talking. Once it gets started this movie seems to fly by, places and characters are explained but not really explored in too much depth. Which might be good or bad, depending on your preferences. For my (lack of) money, it wasn’t a bad way to spend some time. Nice design, nice tunes and average everything else.
Result: Recommended if you like space western musicals, 50’s super-science, and Eraserhead.
Not Recommended if hate movies where guys dance together, things that don’t make sense, or space barns
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