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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Year:	2012
Country of origin:	Finland / Germany / Australia
Director:	Timo Vuorensola
Genre:	Sci-fi satire
Starring:	Julia Dietze, Christopher Kirby, Götz Otto, Udo Kier
Rating:	3/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034314/
Tagline:	In 1945 The Nazis Went To The Moon. In 2018 They Are Coming Back.
Favourite line:	"The Meteor-blitzkrieg shall begin"

The film wth the best tagline in cinema history?
Quite probably.

The plot:
In 2018, the Americans send a manned mission to the dark side of the moon. Encountering mysterious goings on the two astronauts are, quite reasonably, startled to discover that the moon is not in fact a desolate, barren, unpopulated ball of rock, but home to a colony of humans.
Nazi humans.
See, in 1945, knowing that the war was going badly, a select handful of prime Nazi’s were blasted off from Earth, the plan to wait on the moon until they had achieved technology sufficient to ensure victory for the Fourth Reich.
Now, thanks to the technology housed in the astronauts’ smartphones, their plans can press ahead, more swiftly than anticipated.
Despatching a couple of Nazi types to influence the President of America, the intention is to pick up where they left off and install a fascistic regime and, ultimately, to control the world.
Nazi’s in space?
Not if they can help it!

A ten minute comedy sketch, to all intents and purposes, here stretched to movie length.
The concept is fabulous and, surprisingly, the effects work is pretty good too, particularly from a design point of view, the Nazi base on the moon in the shape of a Swastika being a particular highlight.
So great idea, yes, but sufficient to flesh out an entire movie runtime?
Probably not, and there are issues, most notably the broadness of some of the humour, which veers perilously close to slapstick at times.
It’s a mixed bag, but there are major positives.
The black lead character adds satirical spike, simultaneously allowing the writers to lampoon fascism from the 1940’s and small-minded racism of the present day, and Christopher Kirby’s performance as astronaut Washington is suitably nuanced, both comedically and emotionally, playing up his role as the political focus of the piece by convincingly portraying a bit of an air-head, albeit an air-head capable of space travel. He also gets to play the second half of the movie as a white man, the plot involving the Nazi’s albino-ising him to make him more Aryan, a pointed commentary on the black-face phenomena of yesteryear and, truthfully, the sight of a black man ‘whited-up’ is just a touch shocking, and perhaps provides a clear insight of how a black person may choose to feel when the reverse is paraded on screen thoughtlessly.
We found it interesting anyway.
So get stuffed.
Pacing is a problem throughout, the film a little all over the place both in tone and energy, with some scenes dragging on needlessly, well after the plot contrivance or political observation has been fully – and we do mean fully - played out, so some sharper editing scissors may have been wise.
When a high concept film has a concept just as high as this one, it’s unlikely to be an unqualified success, and the main failure here is that, really, this is a one joke film. Sure, it’s a really good joke but, once it’s been used three or four times, where do you go from there and, sadly, the answer for the creatives here appears to be go broad and juvenile, which is a damned shame, save for one corking joke about the evolution of female pubic hair in the time the Nazi’s have been away, the close resemblance to Hitler’s moustache of the modern gals’ pudenda causing much mirth.
A Kickstarter project, this, crowd-funded on the basis of the strength of the initial project, what resulted was effectively an alien invasion story but, this time, the aliens are Nazi’s and, in keeping with the experimental disposition of those most famous criminals in all of history ever, ever, ever, this film was an experiment but, unlike the plans of Hitler and Rommel et al, this experiment was at least partially successful.
Wish it had been better, but wasn’t as bad as we feared it may be.