SPACE MILKSHAKE

Stars: Robin Dunne, Billy Boyd, Kristin Kreuk, Amanda Tapping and the voices of George Takei and Amy Matysio.
Writer/Director: Armen Evrensel.

Rating: 3.5/5

Entirely impervious to serious critical appraisal is Space Milkshake, the feature debut for Canadian writer/director Armen Evrensel. All the elements that should make it a big fat target for high-brow dissection – cheap sets, schlocky effects and fatally derivative plotting – are also all the bits that make it such a wacky joy to watch.

Evrensel is clearly a serious genre buff, taking aim at tropes and conventions that will be instantly recognisable to those familiar with B-movie lore; there are well-played nods to Star Wars, the Alien films and, in one particularly giggly reference, star Billy Boyd’s days as the large-footed hobbit Pippin in Lord of the Rings. Perhaps due to the low-cost confines, there is also a decidedly small-screen sensibility about much of the schtick; if you like Red Dwarf, Futurama or Firefly, you’ll appreciate the cast chemistry and sustained nuttiness of Space Milkshake even more.

The plot is a convincing mash-up of solid sci-fi pseudo-tech, character comedy and time/space continuum hooey. The crew of an orbiting sanitation station, a necessary space vehicle of the near future that collects the tonnes of garbage floating in our atmosphere and clears paths for inter-stellar travellers, begin to experience unexplainable phenomena.

Captain Anton (Boyd, instilling his leader with an often hilarious case of small-man’s syndrome) has just split with his 2IC, the statuesque Valentina (Amanda Tapping); newbie tech-guy Jimmy (Robin Dunne, a naturally-gifted comic) is mostly at a loss for how to assimilate with the captain and crew, so focuses on the gritty, gorgeous Tilda (Kristin Kreuk) to distract himself. Things get weird when a rubber duckie, inversely identical to one given to Valentina by ex flame Professor Gary (an off-screen presence, ultimately voiced by Star Trek veteran George Takei), slams into the side of the craft and a glowing device called The Time Cube is found on board. Soon, Tilda begins to exhibit odd behaviour, all contact with Earth is lost, and the duck proves to harbour a vengeful, interplanetary threat to the crew and all mankind.

One of the great joys of this daft adventure is that everybody is in on the joke but no one winks to the camera ironically. Evrensel has his cast pitch their performances at a precise level that hints at self-knowing yet plays as being fully committed to the premise and all its ludicrous plot twists (Boyd, especially, is a hoot). The big-budget equivalent would be Dean Parisot’s Galaxy Quest, though the fun beats derived from meagre means feels more akin to such 80s outer-space romps as Ice Pirates or Battle Beyond The Stars.

Regardless of its heritage, Space Milkshake (the title? I’ve no idea…) is the ideal mood-lightener for any genre festival, especially in this indie-film production period steeped in morbid visions of zombies and post-apocalyptic wastelands. It has great fun with itself by never indulging in anything profound; any viewer would be wise to be of the same mindset.