Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm gonna be covering a South Korean sci-fi black comedy from 2003. That movie is "Save The Green Planet!"
Now, I actually discovered this movie a few years ago, back when I was still renting DVDs from my local library. And one of the first films I discovered was this movie. Now when I originally saw it, I didn't end up renting it because I wanted to find other movies that peaked my interest. And this one didn't at the time, so I just thought nothing of it.
Then about a few weeks ago, I found this movie again at one of my local video stores and the title of the film sparked my memory of seeing it back at my local library. And this time, I did end up buying the movie. Though I'm not totally sure if it's gonna be worth the price tag of it. The movie was about $15, so...I'm kinda taking a chance here and hopefully the movie will be good enough to be worth that price tag.
Now from what little I've looked up regarding this movie, it's about a guy and his girlfriend, who discovers that aliens are about to invade Earth, and he ends up kidnapping someone, who believes to be one of the aliens, and that he and his girlfriend are gonna torture him in various ways to get the information out of him.
I'll admit, that's a rather...interesting concept for a movie. I'm not totally sure how well it's going to implement this idea, but I'm still all the more curious about it. And since this thing is marketed as a comedy, I'm hoping for it to be really funny. But the only way I'm gonna find out how funny this movie can possibly be is if I shut up and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Save The Green Planet!".
7 minutes later
OK, I have a dumb question here. So this CEO that's supposedly an alien is not only drunk right now, but he has no security escorting him whatsoever, as our main character is in the process of kidnapping him. Wouldn't a CEO normally have security with him in case something happens to him? I'm only asking because he either is an idiot for not having security to begin with, or he just set sent them home or something because he's drunk. I don't know, but either way, it's kinda odd to me that he didn't have any security guards with him right now because of what's happening to him. Just my opinion, though.
2 minutes later
You guys can't hear this for obvious reasons, but this song that's playing right now is a rock rendition of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" from "The Wizard of OZ". And I gotta say...it's sorta decent. Mind you, it isn't great by any stretch, but it's still sorta decent. So at least that's something.
12 minutes later
Well, guys, I am gonna say one thing about our main character. The man can kick a ton of ass, as he just demonstrated. Granted, I'm not totally sure why he was fighting this random stranger to begin with, but still, at least he can hold his own in a fight.
16 minutes later
So that torture chair the CEO is sitting on also acts as a toilet in case he either needs to piss or shit. That is actually kinda disgusting. But if anything else, at least Lee is making sure that if he's indeed an alien, then at least he's making sure he's practicing proper hygiene.
17 minutes later
OK, I have a dumb question here again. So, the detective is talking with Lee while the CEO is trapped underneath them. And I should mention that the CEO can see him through the little hatch that he's trapped under. Why doesn't he just yell for help like he's been doing since he kinda broke free from his chair? Unless that syringe Lee gave him prevented him from talking, then I don't see a reason why he doesn't just yell out for help like he did earlier. It's kinda bugging me slightly.
10 minutes later
OK, I need to bring up something because it's been kinda bothering me for a while now. Now earlier, I mentioned that this movie is suppose to be a black comedy. And I can certainly see that it's trying to be funny. But none of it has really made me laugh so far. I'm not saying that as a knock against the movie, it's just that none of the jokes here have truly made me laugh yet. I'm hoping maybe within the next hour or so that I'll find something here that'll get me to genuinely laugh, but for now, I'll just have to continue to wait and see if that happens.
5 minutes later
O...K...well, that certainly took a turn. Never expected that kind of death involving bees and honey. And I think his dog is eating the remains, too. Oh my god...that *definitely* took a far turn there!
11 minutes later
So, guys, I'm learning a lot more about Lee's backstory and, holy shit, this movie has gone completely in a different direction with it's tone. And...I'm not totally sure how to feel about it. I'll get more into it later when I get to reviewing this movie, but I'm gonna let you guys know right now that this movie is no longer aiming to be a comedy. I'll say that much for now.
15 minutes later
So, guys, I also learned the true nature of these aliens and their purpose. And I'm gonna tell you right now, it's really kinda stupid. But I'll get into all that later once I start to review this thing.
The Review
Well, guys, that was "Save The Green Planet!". And it ends on a rather dismal and really kinda shit ending. Yeah, I don't want to see anymore of this. I'm gonna shut this movie off now...OK. So...what the fuck do I start with here? Well, I suppose I can start off by mentioning that I paid $15 to get this movie and I can safely say that it was nowhere near worth that much money. In fact, I'm starting to kinda despise it now because of my own stupidity.
But I'll try to put that aside for now and just go straight into the movie here. And since I just mentioned it, I'm gonna start off by talking about something I mentioned a little while ago. About the aliens true purpose and everything. Without going into too much detail here, the whole thing felt like an anti-war message that was tacked on here. How our genetic structure in our bodies caused us to go to war, kill each other, and how the whole the thing is the humans fault, because, apparently, no other species outside of the Earth does that sort of thing. Which makes me wonder how many kinds of species these aliens have made in which they monitored those lifeforms to make sure that their species doesn't fight each other? It really doesn't make a whole lot of sense, however, I'm not really going to harp on that point too much because I feel like I would be here for hours if I tried ponder on it for too long.
So, moving past that, let's talk more about the writing. And I have to start with the biggest problem that this movie has: It's tone. See, as I've mentioned a couple of times already, this movie is suppose to be a black comedy. And I will say that this movie does try to be that. But there a couple of things here that stops it from being a full on comedy. The first thing is that a lot of the jokes in this movie don't exactly land here. Now I know that humor is subjective and not everything is going to be funny. But the thing about comedies, at least for me anyway, is that they should at least make you laugh once. And I've seen a lot of movies, both good and bad, that usually are able to garner at least one laugh out of me. This movie, while, again, does try to be a black comedy, nothing much about it made me laugh. It was more weird and kinda awkward humor. Now again, I don't mind that kind of humor in my movies as long as it's funny. But here, I didn't really find much of the humor to be very funny.
Now that's more of a minor problem. The bigger problem with the tone is that it changes at the drop of a hat from around the 80 minute mark of the movie. Right from when they show Lee's backstory, just about everything that follows afterwards is a near pitch black sci-fi horror thriller. And from there, it just drops the comedy bit and goes straight in it's own direction with it's story and tone. And I still have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, it does make for some interesting dynamics and plot points that I haven't really seen done in movies and TV in quite a while. But on the other hand, it just felt like the movie forgot it's own self awareness of it being a somewhat goofy comedy just so it can become a pitch black serious sci-fi film. And it's those elements there that I just can't see myself ever watching this movie again. Especially with that ending. But again, I'll try not to go into it for the sake of spoiling the whole movie.
So what about our characters? Well, the only one I can really mention is Lee, our main character of the film. The best way I can summarize Lee in this movie is short and to the point. Lee is out of his fucking mind. And the thing about that is he's aware of it. He's grown up on sci-fi and alien movies to where he becomes obsessed with it. To a point where he figures out the main CEO of this pharmaceutical company is an alien in disguise. And Lee tries in various ways to torture the information out of him. However, that's only part of the plot. You have the whole detective subplot in which they're trying to figure out the CEO's disappearance on how he was kidnapped and who kidnapped him.
And that leads into one other big problem with this movie, which is it's runtime. This film clocks in at nearly 2 hours long, and a lot of it just feels like filler. You remember that scene I mentioned earlier where I said Lee knew how to kick a ton of ass? Well, a slight spoiler here, that was all just a fantasy in his mind. It doesn't really add much of anything to the movie other than padding. I would also add the whole detective subplot as well, because there's quite a few scenes in this movie where some detectives focus on a red herring because someone took out a few thousand dollars from the bank, but it really doesn't add much to anything else other than, well...padding, really. Like, you could cut about a half hour's worth of film here and you wouldn't miss a thing. This movie probably would've flowed better if the movie was about 90 minutes long. Mind you, it wouldn't exactly change the ending at all, but at least the movie could've still flowed better.
But anyway, I should probably summarize by saying that the writing in this movie is...well, kinda sort of a mixed bag. I don't really hate it, apart from the ending, but the way that it shifted it's tone throughout the last 40 minutes of the movie just felt like it came out of nowhere and it kinda lost itself from being a somewhat campy comedy to a very serious, pitch black kind of film. And I still have very mixed feelings about the whole thing. Now, with that said, let's talk about the acting. Now I should first mention that this movie does not contain any sort of English dub, as it only has it's original Korean dub with English subtitles. And I will say that the acting here is at least pretty good. It's nothing amazing, but I can at least say the actors seemed like they were having fun with this movie. So at least there is that. I kinda think, at times, Lee's actor might've overacted a little bit in a couple of scenes, especially when he has to shout his lines, but at least it's still competent. So, I can grant him that much. But yeah, the acting here overall is perfectly fine for what it is.
Special effects in this movie are actually really good. For a low budget of $3 million dollars, these are some really good special effects. CG is a little bit on the mixed bag side, however, there isn't really much of that here, thankfully. A lot of the effects in this movie are practical. So you have a lot of blood and gore effects here that look really good. I'm surprised this movie wasn't advertised as a horror movie, but whatever. Costuming and makeup effects are also pretty good, too. They aren't exactly amazing, but nothing I would describe as horrible either.
Camerawork here is mostly really good, though during the beginning before the opening credits, there is some bit of shaky cam going on. Thankfully, it doesn't last very long, as most of the camerawork afterwards is pretty straightforward. Lighting here is lit perfectly fine. The sound-mixing here is good. I do want to touch upon one thing about music, because I mentioned that there was a rock rendition of "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" from "The Wizard of OZ" that plays during the opening credits. Well, there's actually two other versions that they play here. One of them is a really sinister creepy version, and it's pretty good, actually. The other plays where some woman is singing the lyrics and it's also really good, too. So, if anything else, at least this movie showed me a couple of really cool renditions of that song. But yeah, other than that, the score here is also fine for what it is. Not amazing, but completely serviceable.
Overall, guys, when all is said and done, am I able to recommend "Save The Green Planet!"? If you're able to overlook the pacing issues this movie has, along with the tonal shift that it has with it's tone, then...sure. I can probably recommend it. However, personally speaking, I'm not really sure if I can recommend this film to anyone else. Now I want to stress that the movie isn't exactly *bad*, it's just that there's a lot here that stops this movie from becoming great. Which is disappointing to say because I wanted to like this movie. I really did. I thought it was going to be some wacky, goofy cornball sci-fi movie that I was really going to like. But sadly, with the way that it shifted it's tone, there's no way I'm ever gonna be able to watch this thing again. And also the fact that I spent $15 just to get this thing is not exactly doing this movie any favors for me. Yeah, if you ever get physical copy of this movie, get it for less than or around $10. If you can find it at that price, then I suppose you can pick it up. For me, though, I kinda made a mistake here and I'm probably not gonna get much back in trade value with this thing. So now, I'm gonna go and watch a better sci fi movie. And you know what? There's one I see that's both goofy and serious at the same time. I'm gonna go and rewatch the first "Starship Troopers" movie. I'm kinda in the mood to watch it again now after seeing it on my DVD shelf. So that's what I'm gonna go do next.
Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.
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