Film Review - Laserhawk
Starring Mark Hamill, Jason James Richter, Melissa Galiamos | Directed by Jean Peller | Digiview DVD 1997 Not Rated FF 99min
Review By DC
Laserhawk. The movie itself is the definition of the word “epic”. Starring Jason James Richter (Free Willy), and Mark Hamill (The Star Wars Trilogy), this sci-fi thriller takes place in small town America, which unfortunately, is being overrun by aliens. The “plot” to this “movie” is laughable, and is only made worse by the atrocious dialogue, and matching performances. But, hey, at least the special effects suck! The story behind this absurd mockery of all things sci-fi seems to have been written by a small child. 250 million years ago, a spider like species of aliens seeded the earth with human life, so that one day, they could return to consume us. Unfortunately for these spider-like aliens, another group of intergalactic soldiers landed on earth first.
Conveniently for our heroes, the ship they crashed in was perfectly undamaged. The souls of these soldiers escaped the undamaged, yet, crashed ship, and sought what I am assuming was supposed to be “pure of heart” people to inhabit. These soldiers found their unlikely targets in two children, yet unaware that their planet faced impending doom. Each child was gifted with a small, half moon shaped piece of plastic that, when connected to the other, was a key to the previously mentioned ship, which just happened to be called, “Laserhawk”. Of course these two kids didn’t inherit the knowledge of what these poorly crafted cereal box toys were, for that would ruin the 87 minutes of bad acting, and dialogue which preceded the final confrontation with the “Arachnoids”. That is correct, “Arachnoids”. As if the name of the super species weren’t bad enough, they looked as if the same small child that wrote the movie, also handled the special effects.
Using the computing power of their TI-86 calculators, the “Special Effects” team handily crafted the image of these aliens, and what a sight to behold they are. Using mid nineties video game effects, the action in this epic has all of the excitement of watching a knitting circle craft a scarf. When the credits roll, after the underwhelming climax, you are left with a profound sense of loss. I reluctantly give this movie one half out of five stars. If I could go lower, I would.