Laughably bad...

An abysmal film presumably knocked out so as to cash in off the back of its very enjoyable forerunner ?Westworld?. That film was written and directed by Michael Crichton (well known sci-fi author and ?Jurassic Park? scribe) ? and Crichton?s lack of involvement with ?Futureworld? should rightly inspire portentous foreboding within a viewer.

The action takes place within the confines of robot-populated theme park segregated into zones or ?worlds? (a la ?the Crystal Maze?). There?s ?Medieval World?, ?Roman World? and (?but of course?) ?Future World? to name three.

In the movie ?Westworld? a robot goes dangerously crazy, taking out patrons of the theme park. It?s a ludicrous but enjoyable idea. ?Futureworld?s? angle, on the other hand, is just ludicrous. Suffice to say it involves replacing prominent world movers-and-shakers (who just happen to be guests at the theme park) with facsimile robots of themselves.

There are a couple of nice touches, it has to be said. A boxing match in which Fonda and Danner don gloves and control ?robotic? boxers seems oddly prescient given the state of modern day video games and bearing in mind this film pretty much pre-dates Space Invaders. Likewise a game of chess involving animated moving pieces must have been seen by George Lucas. The same idea reoccurs, verbatim, in ?Star Wars?.

But maybe that?s the problem with the film - its best ideas have been done much better since. Though I suspect it looked pretty bad when it came out in 1976.

It?s billed as ?starring? Yul Brynner (as ?the Gunslinger?). In fact he appears for about a minute in a laughably bad dream sequence seemingly crowbar-ed in solely so as to get his name on to the credits. The fact that Brynner appears larger than life on the sleeve of this movie is tantamount to a breach of the trades description act.

Fonda?s over-sized spectacles are also ridiculous.

On the whole this film is to be avoided. Oh, and Blythe Danner, the female lead, is Gwyneth Paltrow?s mum, by the way.