I bought this film long before The Last Samurai was released and
I'd even ever heard of Ken Watanabe. The fun looking cover and it
starring Takeshi Kaneshiro are what inspired me to make the purchase.
However it sat on my shelf gathering dust for so long, partially due to its
running time, and it was only after seeing Ken Watanabe in another film,
Batman Begins, that I decided I was going to watch it
regardless.
Space Travelers really is quite a bizarre film. Three bank
robbers take six people as hostages when a robbery goes wrong and they are
surrounded by police. Among the hostages is a terrorist with a hidden
bomb, an electrician, a feuding married couple, a girl with pent up anger
and ridiculously shy and unconfident man. In order to escape the
robbers ask the hostages to pretend to be part of the gang. Surprisingly, the
hostages enjoy doing so and one of the robbers, obsessed with the hit
cartoon "Space Travelers", realises that the 9 of them perfectly fit the
9 characters in the cartoon. Soon they all start acting up to their
cartoon-counterpart's identity and on that strange day, the bank becomes
a tropical paradise...
If there ever was a film that wasn't so sure what sort of tone it
wanted to go for, then Space Travelers is it. There is stupid humour
in there, the protagonists are likening themselves with cartoon
characters, nothing is really to be taken seriously at times, yet the ending
is very sombre and not like the mood of the rest of the film. However,
while that contrast may be there, it wouldn't matter so much if the
content was good enough. But this is an area where Space Travelers
falls short. Too much of the film is used in setting up the scenarios
that will allow each of the characters to show the personality traits of
their supposed cartoon counterpart. This does get a little tedious at
times, as I found myself wanting something to actually happen concerning
the story - the bank robbery went wrong, what are they going to do
about it? The answer basically was "nothing - just sit around and let the
hostages squabble until their personalities are clear."
This was a great shame and reflects poorly on the scriptwriters as the
film had a good quality cast. So much more could have been done with
the film to make it more interesting. Maybe have the robbers try
something else to break into the vault, anything would have done other than
having them sit around and waiting.
The film clocks in at over 2 hours, but could easily have been trimmed
down, or simply condensed quite considerably, which would have greatly
helped reduce the boredom that creeped in while I was watching. There
are a few decent gag moments that will make you smirk but they don't
save the film from being nothing more than completely mediocre in all
ways.
