Space Detective is a low-budget science fiction movie that delivers exactly what its title promises: it has a detective (hardboiled, of course) in space. The story, such as it is, involves the titular space detective Shiro (Matt Sjafiroeddin) responding to the call of an old flame (a catwoman named Jinks Darkanian, played by Angela Rysk). Jinks wants Shiro to steal an important McGuffin from her husband, a demon-faced brute named Thaadis-Larz Darkanian (Nemo Strang). The details of the plot do not matter. There are crosses and double-crosses (of course). Shiro has a mysterious past (of course) and a wandering eye for space-women (of course). Nothing here will surprise, but that fact hardly matters. What matters is the aesthetics. Space Detective relies on animation and imaginative verve to make up what it lacks in funding and plot. As such, it positions itself as a kind of genre blender, mixing noir with science fiction and anime. The setting—a kind of Las Vegas in space—is suitably colorful and gaudy, with hints of Ralph Bakshi. That similarity is heightened by the film’s reliance on rotoscope to animate the main characters.
The movie is clearly a labor of love (the press kit at the production company’s website informs interested readers that it took ten years to develop). However, like many such labors, it loves not wisely but too well. Before we even settle into the movie properly, we are treated (if such is the word) to a seeming eternity of joke science fiction television programs, including Space Jeopardy, Space Bill Clinton insisting that he did not have sexual relations with that robot, and an entire performance of an incomprehensible rap song, performed by dogfaced aliens, the primary lyric of which seems to be Klaatu Barada Nikto—a line readers will recognize from The Day the Earth Stood Still. I mention all of the above without warning about spoilers because there is nothing here to spoil—those are the jokes. The result is a puzzling several minutes in which there are no laughs, no plot, and no atmosphere—a YouTube clip that even avid fans of joke videos would turn off after a minute (at most).
These digressions mar the film’s tone—or, rather, make it nearly impossible to know what that tone is. This is particularly evident in one of the film’s key set pieces, which takes place in a club. The screen is crammed with nods toward other franchises—both Boba Fett and Darth Maul put in appearances alongside characters drinking pan-galactic gargleblasters. These are nods designed to elicit a knowing chuckle from savvy viewers, but they occur with such regularity and in such density that this viewer, at least, felt more wearied than elated. There is a Twitter joke about explaining to one’s date obvious things about a movie (“Me whispering to my date: That’s the Godfather,”) but in the case of this movie such an obnoxious viewing companion is unneeded; the film itself is the whispering date, constantly murmuring things like “That’s the Cantina monsters from A New Hope.”
Space Detective is a muddled production, inconsistent in tone and pace, and full of clichés (“We are not so different,” sneers the villain). There is undeniable talent on display—the animation is rudimentary but respectable for such a low budget, and most of the performances are serviceable—but the resulting film is lackluster. I sincerely hope the filmmakers are able to channel their undeniable talent into more disciplined projects in the future.
