'Dark Star' - Movie Review

John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon's first full length film, essentially their film school project turned feature. Carpenter's name is probably familiar, but if Dan O'Bannon's name isn't, it's because he went on to become a screenwriter. You might recognize movie titles like "Alien" and "Return of the Living Dead?" "Dark Star" wasn't well received at the time, but has become something of a cult classic.

I liked it only marginally better this time than when I first saw it around 1987. I had a bad tendency back then to take humorous movies seriously: not a good plan with a science fiction farce. But apparently the humour still doesn't work for me, even though I understood much of it at an intellectual level. Teaching a sentient bomb Phenomenology in an attempt to convince it to not detonate struck home when I first saw the movie: that one I enjoy. But thinking "that joke should have been funny" for most of the material doesn't really make a movie enjoyable. Still, it was fairly educational.