The Age of Commercialism

Overrated and overhyped

A Major Disappointment

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Made-for-TV hokum, in the tradition of the fun Airport films, with an "all-star" cast playing the usual group of strangers with soap opera issues who board a fancy new rocket-powered hypersonic plane on its maiden flight. All hell breaks loose and the plane is knocked into space! NASA comes to the rescue. Really dumb and never as much fun as you would hope. It's actually pretty dull, which is unforgivable given the absurd premise that begs to be mocked. Cast includes Lee Majors, Lauren Hutton, Ray Milland, Hal Linden, Tess Harper, Heather McAdam, Terry Kiser, and Phil from Murphy Brown. Robert Englund has a bit part. John Dykstra's special effects are good, particularly by TV standards. That's about the best thing I can say about this. I wish it was more fun.

You will find parts of this movie, little segments of it, embarrassingly funny. When I first saw it in 84, it was engrossing. When watching it back I 2003, I just found it pretty pathetic, and felt a schmuck for watching back in the eighties. But they were very cheesy and dark times. The same goes for those Airport films, me and Dad ribtickling ourselves over them. What we've got here is a fictional, what if scenario, about a hyposonic airplane, a Concorde shuttle that can make the distance from Los Angeles to Sydney in two hours. In no way is a two second exterior shot of Sydney airport, Sydney airport. What cheek. We have a good cast here too, notably Linden and Majors, one of many few films he did. While in the air, a rocket has exploded sending hulks of a metal careering towards the super cool airplane. Forced to rear up, drastically, they caught in orbit, for which there is no way to return. I remember in olden days, this got incredibly tense. And when the plane set down again, a relief came over me, although a score of passengers got lost in one of those shutes that blew up. But you just take Starflight One for what is it, a guilty cheesy, eighties pleasure, for the whole family, with unintentional laughs here and there.

Spoilers herein.There was a time when the universal symbol of technology was the locomotive. Then, odd as it may sound today, it was the large steamship. And for a brief period in our history it was the space shuttle.All of these passed from their iconic status after stupendous accidents. I write this shortly after the US president (Bush) tried to weasel out of some political problems by proposing a bold mission to Mars. The American people yawned.This project is dreary in every respect. But it has two interesting elements. The first is that it evokes that brief period when were awed by this machine. It is doubly odd because when brand new it used only thirty year old technology as a matter of mitigating risk.The other thing is the score by Schifin. It is equally dated, a mixture of horns and bongo drums. Ted's Evaluation: 1 of 3 -- You can probably find something better to do with your time.

"Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land" is a silly made-for-TV disaster flick that could have been titled "Airport '83: Trapped in Space". While the film is modestly entertaining at times, it's just too preposterous to believe. The plot: a hypersonic jet takes off for Australia and ends up stuck in outer space by accident. Director Jerry Jameson fared better with "Airport '77", and the cast (Lee Majors, Hal Linden, Lauren Hutton, Tess Harper, Ray Milland, etc.) have done better work than this. Not a real bad movie but not a real good one either. This movie originally aired as a three hour movie on TV; the home video version was edited by about 30-40 minutes and retitled "Starflight One". ** (out of four)