Masters of the Universe

Anyone can make a He-Man movie. It's simple, get a bunch of muscle-heads together, put swords into their hands, then stand back as they go at it. It's a toy line, not Tolstoy.

That's why this 1987 He-Man film is so impressive. It's impressive how much they missed the concept. What we get is the cliché 80s brilliance that if you have great fantasy characters, then they're going to be twice as great if you remove them from their own world and put them into our modern one. Sure, it never once made for a good film, but it sure did make filming a lot cheaper.

What we get here is He-Man meets synth-music loving teenagers, lots of people in ill-fitting costumes, a plot about a cosmic tuning fork, a disbelieving cop who has more screen time than He-Man, and a midget in a rubber suit. The midget (Billy Barty) is probably the worst of it, as every time he makes what passes for a joke, the entire scene stops so everyone can laugh heartily. It's beyond excruciating.

The film however does have three good things going for it. It stars Dolph Lundgren, who makes for a great looking He-Man with his heroic golden mullet. Though it's a shame his English sounds as if he's regurgitating walnuts. Courtney Cox as the hapless wide-eyed Earth teen actually puts in a fairly good performance. So it isn't surprising that for the last third of the film the director has her unconscious. And a brilliant and truly menacing Skelator design (right up till he becomes super gold disco Skelator, anyway. My god, he looks like he has a Columbian drug lord's bidet stuck on his head!). He's huge and radiates evil. He'd be perfect if he didn't spend the entire film sitting down just saying nasty things to hurt peoples feelings. Sort of like your drunken spinster Aunt at the family Christmas party.

The rest of the cast is, I'm fairly sure by their performances, stoned off their tits. As was the writer of this mess who seems to forget the thin motivations of each character whenever he needs to set up a new funny line. The film is highly derivative. From the opening titles it steals from Superman, along with a bad attempt at stealing the theme as well by Tom Conti, to too numerous to name Star Wars riffs. Especially the final showdown at the end. It certainly answers that eternal question; What would the last five minutes of Return of the Jedi look like if it starred He-Man? Special mention for creativity goes to Skelator's oddly familiar post-credits line, “I'll be back!” No, thank god, you won't be.

The film is actually painful to watch in places, made no less so than when Dolph finally howls out the He-Man battle cry of 'I have the power!', which due to all those walnuts he seems to be choking on, comes out as 'Ay erv da prawn!'. All the action sequences are slow and clumsy, often with the actors tripping on their own costumes. The fight scenes aren't so much choreographed as the actors just wobbling their swords around slightly, being very careful not to hurt one another. I had cardboard tube fights with my sister that were better staged!

Meg Foster playing Evil-Lyn is darn sexy. But not worth the price of viewing.

Ancient Eternia saying: 'Live the journey, for every destination is but a doorway to another.' Masters of the Universe is a doorway to a quintessential 80s corner of Hell. And in that regard, it's fantastic!