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Garaga
by Paul Sudlow  
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synopsis

It's supposed to be a routine voyage for the transport ship XeBeC, even with a cargo of two women in cold sleep. But when an explosion in the engine room sends the starship off course, the crew - all first-time shipmates of the bumbling captain - is obliged to abandon ship and crash-land on the wild remote world of Garaga.

The crew awakens the two frozen women, and, as it turns out, one - Heran - is the daughter of General Yun, an important political figure. This, coupled with a string of suspicious mishaps with the survival gear, leads pilot Jay M. Jay to suspect that someone on the crew is not what he or she seems. Rightly so as it turns out that only the captain is who he seems--half the crew serve General Yun and have orders to get his daughter to him at all costs, and the other half have agendas of their own.

It isn't long before the denizens of Garaga make their presence known, as does a mysterious woman with ESP who calls herself Farla and wants Jay's help against the persecution of her people, the Lars.

review
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.



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