Empty Space: “The Black Hole” (1979)

     If a science fiction film openly aspires to penetrate the vast mysteries of the unknown, chances are pretty good that it will fail if the ingredients in such an attempt are comprised of such a level of creative banality they barely rise above a standard of juvenilia that one might find featured on Saturday morning television programming. Such depressing limitations of imagination comprises the tenuous glue which holds together the tired collection of cliches that is Disney’s “The Black Hole”. Never a studio to ignore the possibilities of shamelessly revisiting already trod territory with returns that might generously be regarded as exponentially unrewarding, this space opera-  optimistically conceived to be the studio’s initial toe dipped into the lucrative SF pool opened by “Star Wars”  -combines dumbed down shadows of the studio’s great early live action success “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” with shoe button eyed robots that can’t help but recall the studio’s signatory rodent; not exactly harbingers of profound metaphysical excavation, nor, at least, is there hope for a notable aesthetic evolution in the genre- like “2001”  -when the film is hampered with direction, writing and performances that fail to rise above the level of the dreariest of the studio’s earliest 1970’s comedy output (though this isn’t supposed to be a comedy and rather than dreary is intended to be awe inspiring).

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