In this infamous film version of the popular French comic strip by Jean-Claude Forest, Jane Fonda plays the sexy yet innocent space-age heroine of the year 40,000 A.D. who never gets herself into a situation that requires too much clothing. BARBARELLA opens with the titular heroine stripping down to nothing in zero gravity among strategically placed credits. From there Barbarella embarks on a mission to find a peace-threatening young scientist named Duran Duran (Milo O'Shea) by order of the president of Earth. En route, she's attacked by killer dolls, is strapped into a contraption known as the Excessive Machine, and falls in love with a blind angel. Remaining true to its comic book origins, Barbarella's adventure unfolds in a series of dramatic difficulties and unlikely solutions, making for a galloping pace and never-ending opportunities for Mario Garbuglia's hallucinatory set design to dazzle. With guest appearances by 1960s icons Anita Pallenberg, Marcel Marceau, and David Hemmings and featuring dialogue by novelist Terry Southern, among others, BARBARELLA is not only a comic sci-fi sex romp but also a sly tongue-in-cheek portrait of the morality and debauchery of that era. And interestingly enough, Fonda was married to director Roger Vadim at the time of production.
The famed French comic strip comes to glorious psychedelic life in director Roger Vadim's 41st-century space opera. Once you get past Jane Fonda's infamous antigravity striptease however, the script turns rather dull and the imaginative sets steal the whole show as Fonda's nubile intergalactic bimbo experiences close encounters of the sexually bizarre kind. A pleasure machine, cannibalistic dolls and Anita Pallenberg's Black Queen help ease the verbal vacuum in Vadim's relentless visual assault, which is sure to delight some and prove tiresome to others.
Halliwell's Film Guide
Campy and slightly sick adventures with angels and other space people, from a highly censorable comic strip; some ingenious gadgetry and design, but not much of interest in the foreground.
Radio Times
Halliwell's Film Guide
