Movie review: Iron Sky

2:59 PM Saturday Aug 11, 2012

There's plenty of film-buff cutesy stuff in this Finnish Nazis-from-the-moon spoof to keep one amused for much of its daft duration. Charlie Chaplin's The Dictator is a running gag. So too are nods to Dr Strangelove. And the Downfall internet meme, which kept so many amused a few years back with its blitz of re-subtitled ranting Hitlers, has inspired a scene here. One, funnily enough, not involving any Nazis.

Add its imaginative cyberpunk machinery design and space battle special effects - both showing where the bulk of the partly crowd-sourced small budget went - and Iron Sky offers just enough inspired silliness. Just.

Because Iron Sky, which posits that German space rockets got the Fatherland's best and brightest to the dark side of the moon in 1945, is certainly lacking in several other departments - dialogue, acting, plot, memorable gags, energy - and it's nowhere as outrageous as it thinks it is. Sure, it has a Nazi mad scientist turning a captured African-American astronaut white. But it steers clear of anything remotely anti-Semitic.

Its attempt to satirise American politics with a Sarah Palinesque president, who figures the return of the lunar Nazis can only be good for her re-election chances, lacks any real edge and feels a couple of years too late, even if this is set in 2018.

Cast-wise, the only performance that's as unhinged as the film's concept is from Gotz Otto, who has played lower-ranked members of the SS before in both Schindler's List and Downfall.

As "Schutzstaffel Obergruppenfuhrer" Klaus Adler in this, he certainly looks to be enjoying the promotion.

Cast: Julia Dietze, Peta Sergeant, Udo Kier
Director: Timo Vuorensola
Rating: M Running time: 92 minutes
Verdict: Moon Nazi movie lack of gags its downfall
2.5 stars