I just returned from the first tour screening. The place was a small club at the heart of Turku, and built for bands to perform rather than a movie theater, but the mood was great. The crew introduced themselves, and were greeted with the traditional contained cheering.
The movie started with elegant new title design and theme music, quality not one bit shy of a true professional movie. The movie was technically extremely well dome throughout the picture, not just on some money shots with garbage filler as often is the case with such films. Effects are top-notch, and post-processing is as good as DV can ever offer.
Sound mix was good. Sometimes the dialogue got a bit muffled, but the rest of the soundtrack just boomed with POWER! You'll want a good audio set with this one.
The story starts out a bit awkward as was expected, given that the heroes were stranded on the 21st century earth in the last movie. Things smooth out quickly, and the plot gets underway. The story takes twists from absurd to serious and back to absurd, but the plot stays coherent.
The humor is all new, with lots of stuff mixed together. There are the usual low-brow jokes and Adam Sandler acts, then there is Buster Keaton / Harold Lloyd -esque slapstick and rather clever pokes at the various sci-fi franchises, as well as sci-fi in general. There is even a good measure of political satire thrown in. As a whole, the movie is more a black comedy.
The pacing of the movie is really well done. There is no tarrying around, and the interest keeps on. There's no too much happening at the same time either. The balance is well kept.
Acting was the most varied issue. There were few professional actors, even one superstar by local measure (Kari Väänänen), and their performance truly stood out. Quite some of the not-so-professional performances were quite enjoyable. There were no really terrible scenes, at worst the acting was OK.
As many long-awaited movies have got over-hyped and then fallen flat, I had suppressed some of the hopes, but this movie really lives up to (and exceeds) any expectation I've had. The plot is NOT what you'd find in such a movie made in Hollywood; the humor is quite dark at times and silly at others, and the satire stings in every direction. If there was an 'european art movie' with Stuff! Blowing! Up! it would probably look like this movie.
I give it a ****½/*****