Barbarella

Oh Lord, what a film.  I can’t quite figure out if the filmmakers seriously made an awful movie, or if they intentionally made a ridiculous movie.  Whichever the case, I suspect that doing drugs would substantially enhance the experience of watching it.  The plot explanations throughout the story are outrageously convoluted.  Like this exchange between Barbarella and the evil mad scientist, Durand-Durand, explaining some kind of powerful, evil force beneath them...

Barbarella: Tell me what is that horrible thing under the floor?

Durand-Durand: That is the mathmos, my child…  Well see the whole city is built over a lake, a very curious lake composed like you and I of living energy but energy in liquid form and it watches us.  It is magnetic and being positively charged it feeds on negative psychic vibrations what you would call evil, yes it thrives on evil thoughts, deeds, and flesh.  And in return it gives us warmth, light, and life itself, but it has a terrible appetite.  Perhaps you’ll see some other time.

Say what?

I tend to enjoy absurd, ridiculously bad, unintentionally funny movies like Troll (1986), the Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), kung fu flicks of the 70s, etc. but I don’t like this one as much.  The main character, Barbarella, bothers me.  She’s not much of a hero.  She kind of just goes around getting beat up, trapped, imprisoned.  The whole time she’s more or less pathetic and helpless.  All she can seem to do is wait for some random guy to come save her, and then repay him with sex.  I don’t know I just don’t like seeing women being reduced to weak creatures that have nothing to offer but physical pleasure.  They’re so much more than that!  The movie would have been better for me if they had made her a badass like a futuristic Red Sonja or an Ellen Ripley type.