Avaruusmatka

This second animation of Karel Zeman's of the fantastic world of Jules Verne's is not as efficient and ingenious as the first one, twelve years earlier, "Face au drape", mainly because the story here is more absurd and unrealistic. It is based on Jules Verne's most extravagant science fiction novel, "Hector Servadac", his most absurd novel about a fragment of earth being cut off from earth by a comet, a confrontation which in reality no one and least of all earth itself would have survived. But Hector Servadac does with a bunch of other people around the western Mediterranean, but Karel Zeman makes up a story of his own with smugglers, Arab freedom fighters, a lovely girl at the centre of things turning it all into a romantic love story, dinosaurs, sea monsters and what not. While "Face au drapeau" was replenished with splendid humor and great cinematography in black and white, this one is in color with a rather boring lack of humor and with concentration on metal utensils constantly being wrecked and spread in havoc all around making a lot of noise. Karel Zeman makes Jules Verne's most extreme science fiction extravaganza turn into a dream, and that partly saves the film from the blatant absurdity of the novel.