Reviews in Retrograde: The Black Hole

Critical Outcast isn't my first attempt at a website, I had a few stutter steps in the late 1990's and early 2000's. These attempts generated a whole bunch of poorly written, often very short and spoilerific reviews. I recently stumbled upon them in my archives and thought you may be interested in seeing some of these early attempts at writing. They are as they were then, I make no apologies for how bad or how short they are. Feel free to have at them with reckless abandon! I present to you: Reviews in Retrograde.



A crew on a small spaceship in deep space come upon a long thought missing ship on the edge of a black hole. Aboard this ship is a madman who wishes to enter the black hole. It is up to the captain and his crew to survive his madness and escape the inescapable power of the black hole.

Disney's first foray into science fiction (not to mention its first PG rated film) is a success and a failure at the same time.

Let's start with why it failed. The biggest thing were the characters, the dialogue was generic and the characters fell flat. The only character that attempted to stand out was Dr. Hans Reinhardt(Schell). But he fell into the stereotypical madman act, not bringing anything really new to table. The robots were interesting but since this film came out after Star Wars, they seemed to be stale copies. That was it, the characters/dialogue were flat, although the story was very good. One other thing to mention is the pacing, while being entertaining, it was a bit slow, and could have used some more action.

As for the good points, I previously mentioned the story. The idea is very good, a presumed lost ship found teetering on the edge of a black hole and manned by an army of robots serving a madman while a spacheship crew try to piece together what happened while trying to stay alive. Great concept. On top of that, the special effects were excellent, I can forgive the occasional visible suspension wire. For the time they were revolutionary, not quite on par with Star Wars, but pretty close.

It was a good movie with some fatal flaws that keep it away from the legendary status, I would consider it classic though.

Overall, an entertaining film and one well worth watching, despite the cardboard characters. If you haven't seen it, do check it out.