Barbarella (1968)

So much average

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Up until Valerian and the movie of a 1000 bores, this was the worst psychedelic sf movie ever. Based on the comic from France and starring the put upon Jane Fonda (who should be forced to watch it anytime she opens her mouth about anything), this is a really silly and at times, dull movie. Typical eurotrash. I'd rather watch The Fifth Element any day of the week. While it does have a few interesting designs here and there, it's mostly silly. Some like it, they can have it.

In 1968, cinema history was graced by the birth of an indubitable Sci-Fi classic, Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, a visionary ground-breaker, while on the other end of genre's gamut, we also witnessed this French-Italian sexploitation adaptation of the racy French Sci-Fi comic strip. BARBARELLA, a French-Italian co-production, directed by Frenchman Roger Vadim and starring his then-wife Jane Fonda as the titular heroine, presented in an unspecified future, it is as outlandishly lavish of its setting, as goofily puerile of its bare-bones story. The opening gambit introduces Barbarella, an earth astronaut, strips herself from her space suit inside under the zero-gravity environment, against Seurat's famous pointillistic painting, a pastiche of high art and low pleasure to pander to audience's sensorium rams home immediately. Barbarella is sent to a galaxy far far away to look for an earthling named Durand Durand, an inventor of a deadly weapon which the President of Earth (Dauphin) thinks might fall into wrong hands. Her adventure consists of a nexus of chance encounters with various characters on the 16th planet of Tau Ceti, as a hapless and somewhat dimwit, but perennially spirited damsel-in-distress, saving from the assault of creepy dolls with razor-sharp teeth controlled by evil kids by the hirsute Catchman Mark Hand (Tognazzi), she consents to Mark's love-making proposal, not the pill- inducing high-tech consummation, but the old-fashioned way, which turns out to be quite toothsome, please, suspend your disbelief! Further on, she meets a blind angel Pygar (Law) who has lost the will to fly, Professor Ping (French mime icon, Marcel Marceau), an outcast living in a slipshod labyrinth, the leader of the resistance Dildano (Hemmings), the Great Tyrant and Black Queen of Sogo (Pallenberg), and her devilish concierge (O'Shea), Barbarella uses sex as a means to express her gratitude, Mark aside, she cannot keep her hands off the Adonis-like Pygar and through sex, she endows him the renewed strength of flying, and with Dildano, their coiffure-remodeling palm sex is so otherworldly steamy that it stuns an awkward bystander. The only savior she doesn't reciprocate in putting out is the one-eyed wench, the Great Tyrant in disguise, although lesbianism is explicitly hinted (the Tyrant keeps referring her as "Pretty Pretty") to tease out the male gaze. In the main, sex is Barbarella's strongest suit, in a crashingly bawdy episode, her unquenchable sexual drive can even render the infamous orgasm killing machine overload, in a way, sex becomes her lethal weapon eventually, which prefigures a forthcoming era of sex liberation. Mario Garbuglia's production design is as outré as one can imagine, along with Fonda's wardrobe showcase, while the film's rough-hewn special effect inevitably looks like a child's play, but together they confer a retro, varicolored splendor to today's spectators in the face of the props' overtly tacky tangibility. The plot is the film's underbelly, a rushed ending is atrociously wheeled out, but Fonda, in her most gratuitously sexed-up endeavor, delivers an open-faced seriousness and immediacy, she really cares to find out Durand Durand! However barmy it seems, at any rate, BARBARELLA doesn't shortchange its source material, a low-brow cartoon wallows in its high kitschy style with admirable candor, aka, the spirit of space camp!

This is going to be a simple review. The reason for it is that this movie aimed low, it was trying to be trash and it succeeded in maybe entertaining the kind of person who enjoys watching trash. The plot is that Barbarella is called for fan service... I mean an assignment by the President of Earth and current leader of the solar system that a scientist named Duran-Duran (That's how they pronounce it and yes that does make this movie hilarious whenever they say it) from creating a weapon, because in this future hippies and the counter-culture of the 60's is dominant across galaxies so she goes to a planet that doesn't have this and tries to find him. This movie is not for me, the entire movie is like a drug trip written on paper by someone who really hates war strung along by fan service of a 30 year old Jane Fonda. Oh and the fan service, if it's your thing to see women in extremely skimpy outfits of which she keeps changing them and doesn't put clothes on for 10 minutes, a character who for the first hour has sex every 20 minutes (including a WEIRD one where she joins hands with another person after taking pills until their hair flies everywhere... Did I mention this was like a drug trip?)... All this and more, if this is your thing then without judgement, you'll probably love this. The Visual effects are hokey but in all fairness I did like the creativity with some of the set design and this is probably the most 60's movie ever made, there is literally no other time period in which I can see this getting made. I know all I talked about is how drug-trippy this movie is and the fan service but, take that away - there isn't that much else to comment on. To sum up, this movie is trash - pure and simple. I didn't like it but I can see other people liking it so if trash is your thing then I'd recommend this.

it was courageous, provocative, strange, fascinating, maybe. it remains provocative, fascinating. and amusing. a cocktail of rock, nudity, psychedelic art, Sci. Fi., eroticism in large slices and bizarre dialogs, chaotic scenes and fake links between the characters. one of lovely films about nothing. like a game of children. not complicated, out of rules, charming for possibilities, eccentricity, for the strange manner to translate reality in original forms.a parody, off course. but, more important, a delight. that status does it a legend despite the insignificant script. and new occasion for discover a Jane Fonda as a flame of a complicated revolution. a film who gives all to the viewer. as a child's game.