Word: androids
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...might be less fun for those folks who seem to relish the story of security agents and protective apparatus as much as what Presidents and Prime Ministers do and say. No more yarns about "the sinister black briefcase" carrying nuclear codes, or the "android image" of the Secret Service, or how agents switch revolver style when they change clothes from casual (Smith & Wesson Model 10) to formal (Walther PPK), or the press "baying for names and quotes." Unfortunately, the prose that would result would be far more prosaic. The sense of pomp and ceremony and history would be sacrificed...
...MOST OBVIOUS PROBLEM with Android is that it doesn't live up to the blurb on its advertising posters, which claims that it's time for Max 404, our hero, "to get down to earth." After spending an hour watching life in this floating lite-bright set passing for a space station, we really want Max to get down to earth. But it's a tease: Max never gets there and, in fact, just when he is finally earthbound, suitcase in hand, the credits start coming on. Android is a parody which needs to be a lot funnier...
...lovesick teenage android living in a lonely space station where he assists his creator--an insane, Nazified professor played by Klaus Kinski--on "Operation Cassandra" (the ultimate android!). As the film opens, Max is hanging around the space station playing video games, listening to rock-and-roll, and watching video tapes of black-and-white Hollywood feature films from the last century. When a female voice comes on the monitor, sending out an SOS and requesting permission to land, Max becomes really excited--a real live woman. Without asking the boss for permission. Max allows the damaged spaceship to dock...
...even a real man in the literal sense. The professor becomes furious when he learns that visitors have been allowed into his station, but his heart melts--just like Max's--when he sees Maggie: he needs a real woman as a model for designing his female android...
UNFORTUNATELY THERE JUST AREN'T enough moments in Android where the humor comes to the surface. This sort of parody would work much better or an outrageous level--as in Airplane, where things are so stupid, you have to laugh at them. Android instead comes across as an overblown premiere of a sci-fi television show, whipped up just in time for fall previews, with silly cardboard sets, silly stock characters, and lots of pointless footage...