How entertaining? ★☆☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 3 March 2014
This article is a review of EUROPA REPORT. |
“Life on Earth began in the ocean, so in some ways this mission will be like taking a trip back in time,” Katya Petrovna (Karolina Wydra)
From 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY to SILENT RUNNING to ALIEN to THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK to EVENT HORIZON to MOON to STAR TREK to GRAVITY, if you’re going to make a space-set flick, you better be bringing your A game. EUROPA REPORT, it is a shame to, ahem, report is absolutely dire.
One wonders if the narrative was chopped up to try and veil what a misfire the filmmakers had on their hands. Messing around with the timeline adds nothing. We are in not in 21 GRAMS territory. The Europa One Mission is the first attempt to send people into deep space, specifically to the titular moon of Jupiter, which may, due to the water content, have some kind of life. Of course various stuff has to trip up elements of the expedition. (The premise of MONSTERS has a probe collecting life somewhere in the solar system and crash landing on Earth. Cinema does not seem to have a positive view of any potential neighbours.)
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EUROPA REPORT decides to go down the found footage route. Yawn. Hasn’t the technique reached creative death now? Tedium is quickly established as the same shots inside the cramped spaceship are repeated. Conveying the boredom of space travel, sans the help of cryo-sleep, might have been an understandable exercise in audience patience-testing. Here though, the journey gets filled by cloddish crew conversations and monologues, e.g. “Hey, everybody. Space is great, um... I miss you guys. We're a long way away now. I can't even see, uh, I can't even see Earth anymore,” James Corrigan (Sharlto Copley). There’s also a character called Dr. Daniel Luxembourg - seriously that’s his surname. The stuff back on Earth is no better: We witness a press conference so budget as to consist of three people, and then a talking heads to camera in pseudo-documentary format explaining the found footage. The head of the project, Dr Samanth Unger (Embeth Davidtz), says stuff such as, “You put men and women into space because they have strength in the face of cosmic odds.” What does that even mean?
The acting style is from the crummy pensive school, which doubly disappoints, as the cast is a talented international consortium:
- Sharlto Copley (DISTRICT 9),
- Michael Nvqvist (THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO trilogy),
- Anamaria Marinca (4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS),
- Isiah Whitlock Jr. (THE WIRE) and
- Embeth Davidtz (JUNEBUG).
Don’t even get me started on the visual effects. EUROPA REPORT’s are so unbelievable/unimaginative as to make DOCTOR WHO’s creaky CGI look like AVATAR in comparison. Where’s the attention to detail? Zero gravity randomly kicks in, a bit.
When the likes of Brian De Palma’s MISSION TO MARS and Val Kilmer’s RED PLANET are a cut above, you know something has gone very wrong.
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