One of Charlie's Angels meets Austin Powers and Star Trek

Over the Thanksgiving free view weekend of the premium movie channels, I had the opportunity to DVR Barbarella and watch it.

Jane Fonda plays Barbarella who, after some groovy 1960s MOR music is seen in a spaceship that looks like it's full of shag carpeting. She gets a call from Earth's president, who tells her that she's going to have to go to the planet Lythion because that's the last known location of the notorious scientist Durand-Durand (Milo O'Shea). It seems that most of the galaxy has done away with violence and lives in love, but Durand-Durand has possibly come up with some sort of device called a "positronic ray" that could be used as a superweapon to who knows what end. Barbarella has to find him and stop him.

Barbarella crash-lands on the planet and as soon as she gets out of her spaceship she's attacked by dolls. The man who saves her tells her that if Durand-Durand is on the planet, she's going to have to go to the capital city of Sogo to find him, although that's a dangerous proposition. To get there, she's going to have to go through a Labyrinth with a bunch of slaves, including a Professor (Marcel Marceau) and the blind angel Pygar (John Philip Law).

Eventually, Barbarella does get to Sogo, and finds that it's a city built on a lake of neural energy or somesuch, except that the neural energy is all evil. The city is ruled by the Evil Tyrant (Anita Pallenberg), and danger lurks at every turn. However, there are also some rebels hiding in the city, led by Dildano (David Hemings). Eventually, Barbarella does find Durand-Durand, and....

If my summation of the plot sounds like a mess, it's not just because I'm not the best of writers, but also because the plot really is a mess. It sounds more like something director Roger Vadim came up with as an excuse to put Fonda in those skimpy, skin-tight outfits. The men all want "old-fashioned" (ie. lustful instead of scientifically planned) sex with her, although not rape so much as actually wanting to know what real sex is like.

The sets are bizarre, and the ending is even more bizarre. It all adds up to something that's most definitely different. I don't think I can say that I either loved it or hated it; instead it's one of those movies that I find hard to judge simply because it's so off-the-wall bizarre. Parts of the movie were laugh out loud hilarious, and parts of it were actually tedious.

With all that in mind, I'd still say that Barbarella is a movie everybody should see once, just because it is so bizarre.