Here’s one I haven’t seen since I was a kid. I didn’t really watch Saturday morning cartoons as I was never a morning person, so the extent of what I know about He-Man comes from this movie. I hope I don’t offend the die hard fans with my ignorance because, frankly, you guys kinda scare me. So let’s not pretend this stuff is Shakespeare. The extremely bad attempts at comic relief make that perfectly clear.
The mighty warrior He-Man (Dolph Lundgren) lives on planet Eternia, home of Castle Grayskull. The castle, which holds a plethora of magic secrets, has just been seized by the villainous Skeletor (Frank Langella) and the commander of his hellish army, a witch named Evil-Lyn (Meg Foster). There the villains have taken “The Sorceress of Grayskull” hostage with the help of a “cosmic key” which rips holes in the space-time continuum. This plot device will conveniently usher the characters to Earth, probably because Cannon Film Group was unwilling to raise enough money to shoot entirely on Eternia sets.
It’s on Earth that a duplicate of this cosmic key is lost and He-Man must recover it before Skeletor’s minions do. Joining him are a character named Man-At-Arms, a troll, and a female warrior known as Teela, played by Chelsea Field. This band of heroes cross paths with the most insignificant characters in the film: a couple of teenagers played by Courtney Cox and TV actor Robert Duncan McNeill.
I’m gonna take a wild guess that Cox and McNeill’s characters weren’t part of the original mythos. They feel like an afterthought, added by misguided screenwriting logic: “We should give audience members someone they can relate to!” The film wastes so much time on these white bread teenagers, it’s a cheat to everyone who came to see swords, sorcery, and cheesy action. If, like me, you thought Masters of the Universe was going to be set almost entirely in a fantastical world like Flash Gordon, you’re going to be disappointed.
Masters of the Universe desperately wants to be the next Star Wars film, and although Bill Conti’s music and most of the camerawork are up to snuff, most scenes will have you wondering if you’re watching the first take. During a panoramic of Skeletor’s army marching across a battlefield, one of the extras trips and has trouble standing back up. In an action sequence, He-Man is heroically holding off the bad guys as his friends flee through a doorway; the door, which is supposed to be propped against a wall, keeps falling down and distracting Lundgren from his acting. Later, when being lashed by one of Skeletor’s henchmen, Lundgren’s reactions to the whip are hilariously out of sync.
Despite its many flaws, Masters of the Universe just isn’t bad enough to enter “so bad it’s good” territory. And despite some wonderful costume creations, it isn’t quite good enough for anyone else, either, unless they’re fans of the source material. The film looks pretty good in HD and roughly half of the special FX are actually kind of impressive, but Frank Langella’s skull makeup restricts his performance instead of enhancing it.
The Goug' Blog 