Verdict
Summary
Gleefully low budget but endearingly produced for fans of Star Wars and home-grown science fiction movies, Hyperspace might’ve worked even better if it had avoided all the Star Wars in-jokes and just tried to do its own thing because the special effects in the movie are more than adequate and the score by future Matrix composer Don Davis is pretty darn good! The movie has a MAD magazine style (which is explicitly referenced), and a PG-rated sense of humor, which is fun, if a little weak and tiresome by the end.
Plot:
Space invaders land in rural USA, looking for a princess and “plans,” causing chaos.
Review:
A bucket-faced space lord with a cape and tiny minions who look like Jawas invade earth, via a hulking space ship that lands in rural, USA where the fishing and hunting are the only pastimes, it seems. The space lord is looking for an escaped princess and “plans” he needs (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?), and suddenly it’s chaos wherever he goes. An academic UFO specialist named Hopper (Chris Elliot about a decade before Cabin Boy) doesn’t believe all the radio chatter about an invasion, but he sure gets the reality shoved in his face when the space lord and his huge ship declare war on the world, shooting their lasers and space cannons every which way. The Army and weekend warriors show up in force to duke it out with the invaders, leading to a spectacular explosion when the space lord’s guns stop working. Did I mention that this movie begins with a yellow text crawl that opens with “Episode IV”?
Gleefully low budget but endearingly produced for fans of Star Wars and home-grown science fiction movies, Hyperspace might’ve worked even better if it had avoided all the Star Wars in-jokes and just tried to do its own thing because the special effects in the movie are more than adequate and the score by future Matrix composer Don Davis is pretty darn good! The movie has a MAD magazine style (which is explicitly referenced), and a PG-rated sense of humor, which is fun, if a little weak and tiresome by the end. At only 83 minutes, this is a quickie, and it was even shot in 3D by Todd Durham, who later collaborated with Adam Sandler on Hotel Transylvania.
Kino Lorber brings Hyperspace to Blu-ray in a two-disc edition, which presents the film in both standard 2D, and also in the 3D format. They’ve included a pair of 3D glasses, as well as a bonus feature on disc 2 from Durham: The Fright Before Christmas, a short film, a 75 minute making-of feature of Hyperspace, and trailers, plus alternate artwork and a slipcover.
