A movie featuring political intrigue, a cast of dozens, intelligent simians, wise-cracking pilots, rustics with amazing mental powers, a duel aboard a giant space station, and an army of killer robots, is either a balls-to-the-wall epic called "Star Wars," or a confusing horrible mess. Sadly, "Garaga" is not "Star Wars."
"Garaga" simply tries to squeeze too many elements into a single movie. The result is a confusing morass that feels as if it was assembled by a disparate committee all wanting to include their own cinematic biases. Fantasy ape-men, psychic tribes, scheming androids and a military raid on an unexplored planet all make for fun escapism as long as they don't all try to shoehorn into one picture.
Confusing right out of the gate, the story features an overlarge cast, each of whom take forever to distinguish themselves. Confusing at the final bell - exactly how does Alf hope to conquer the universe with his dozen mecha men? Why does he have any interest in this planet as a home base, as opposed to one that, say, doesn't have ESPers on it? Who knows? Movie logic is often incomprehensible.
Speaking of which, at one point in their fight to the death, Jay has the opportunity to shoot Alf in the back and save everyone without much effort, but instead decides to posture and shout something inane, giving android boy time to recover and shoot back, leading to all sorts of complications. Bah. Stupid heroes aren't very heroic.
The dialog is something terrible to behold. Try this "Plan 9 From Outer Space" moment on for size:
"The Umlada are under General Young's complete control?"
"So they're killing the Lars."
"Yeah, and under General Young's orders."
So, they're under his control and under his orders too? You don't say! Imagine 100 minutes of this. Fruity exclamations such as "What in the love of nature planet is this?" round out the fun.
It's not fair to say that the entire climactic battle is ruined by the incessant, cheesy lounge lizard background score (after all, there are probably folks out there that love cheesy lounge music), but it certainly doesn't raise the excitement factor.
Sometimes, when an anime importer really wants a hot title - say, a hot '80s mecha series - it also winds up buying a couple of crappy titles the Japanese license holder can't otherwise unload to clinch the deal. This has to be the story of how "Garaga" came to be, for rare is the man who could sit through this drivel thinking he's got an epic hit on his hands. To see an '80s science fiction title with a lot of action and intrigue, try "Votoms," also distributed by Central Park Media.
