Snark, Critic and Pop!

Alternate title: Honey, I Shrunk the Budget!

Antibody is a low, low budget film varation of classic film Fantastic Voyage, with the subtle difference that this is not fantastic.  Granted the film does not officially credit Voyage with the story, but there’s good reasons for that.  1) It’s a slightly different story.  2) Proper creditation means you have to pay the original source a little thing I like to call “money.”  2a) Did I mention this is a low, low budget film?

The original Fantastic Voyage featured a team of scientists shrunk with a vessel to microscopic proportions and inserted into the body of a vital Soviet defector in order to save his life. Whereas in Antibody  the scientists are shrunk to sub-Danny DeVito size in order to find a detonation device hidden somewhere in a dying terrorist’s body.  X-rays will alledgedly trigger the detonator which will alledgedly set off an alledged nuclear explosion in Berlin, so the logical conclusion is to miniaturize and go in for a sight-seeing tour of the dude’s spleen!

The protagonist is played by ever reliable character actor Lance Henriksen.  Henriksen is always fun to watch even if his movies aren’t, and this one ain’t fun.  Lance plays a former FBI bomb squadder who, after being blamed for a fiasco is sent to the horrors of working in the private sector (where *gasp* results are expected).

Henriksen’s nemesis/potential love interest is a plucky reporter named Pearson, whose unspectacular and yet sensationalistic coverage of the first bombing is what forces Henriksen out of the FBI.  Pearson is supposedly an intrepid and talented investigative journalist, although she at one point pronounces “Nobel Prize” as “Noble Prize.”  She was not edumacated good, methinks.  Also noteworthy is that this glaring mispronounciation made it into the final cut of the film. 

So bold is Ms. Pearson that the she takes her cowardly cameraman (is there any other kind?) straight up to the terrorist who has just murdered the German Chancellor in order to broadcast his demands.  As soon as the terrorist finishes his diatribe, Pearson asks: “What would you say to your critics that say you’re a bloodthirsty lunatic?”

This is relatively stupid for a few reasons.  Not only is it provocative to a killer when he has no further use to allow you to live (in fact, he does kill her cameraman for her insolence) but THIS TERRORIST HAS JUST EMERGED AS A THREAT IN THE LAST FIVE MINUTES, WHO THE HECK ARE HIS CRITICS THAT YOU’RE CITING?  DID THAT TWIT ASHTON KUTCHER ALREADY TWEAT ABOUT IT?

*Sigh*

The ship used for the unfantastic voyage looks like the bridge of the Enterprise — the Scott Bakula version.  Er, at least according to that commercial for it I once saw, of course.  The ship has Star Wars-style gun-turrets where the crew can get in and fire away at various bodily functions that attempt to stop them from their silly mission.

Antibody lives up to its name.  It was hard on my eyes, tough on my nerves, and somehow managed to provoke me into stubbing my toe.  This film is so anti-body that not even my orbital bone was spared.

Do yourself a favor and avoid Antibody.