Technical effects: Dazzling. Story: Not so hot.
Don’t those two judgments pretty much sum up the critical history of most 3-D movies?
Remember “Bwana Devil”? Remember “Jaws-3D”? Remember “Comin’ at Ya”? Well, maybe not all 3-D movies are on that level. But our opening description fairly well fits “Encounter in the Third Dimension,” the latest three-dimensional IMAX vehicle to open at Navy Pier’s IMAX Theater.
With a title clumsily imitative of Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi thriller “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and hokey, hotsy-totsy comedy and musical numbers that suggest Saturday morning in kiddie TV land, this is a movie that hops shamelessly from one extreme to another.
On the one hand, it boasts some of the most spectacular stereoscopic effects seen on any screen, regular or king-size. On the other hand, it has a plot flat as a pancake. For 40 minutes, director Ben Stassen and cowriters Stassen and Kurt Frey simultaneously give us a capsule history of stereoscopic movie effects and bombard us with the frenetic antics of a wacko scientist, his cute robot Max and famed TV horror show vamp Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, played by actress Cassandra Peterson in her famous decolletage-revealing black gowns.
Still, if you get hooked into this film’s effects — which are extraordinary — you may not mind. The movie starts with a clever opening illusion that almost tricks us into thinking a dungeonlike scientist’s laboratory on screen is a real set on a theater stage. After this trompe l’oeil folderol, “Encounter” introduces its ironic narrator (Harry Shearer) and its goofy professor (Stuart Pankin) and then launches into a tongue-in-cheek voyage through the history of 3-D movies and visual perspective, from cave drawings and the renaissance through the 19th Century and the earliest movies right up to today’s nerve-jangling computerized magic.
That magic is most impressively on display in several super-duper, mocked-up roller coaster scare rides: zapping us up, down, all around and through one wildly detailed and memorably ghoulish background after another. But “Encounter” begins to shift into high gear (or low, depending on your viewpoint) when it brings on Mistress Elvira.
The buxom Peterson, a sultry slit-gowned horror wench who as Elvira specializes in making suggestive remarks while hosting schlocko B-movies, may actually be the most thoroughly three-dimensional effect in the movie. But, her appearances, don’t actually last very long, though you can’t really say that we see too little of Elvira in “Encounter” as she bumps and grinds away in show-stopping song-on-the-staircase numbers. Ah-one, ah-two and she’s usually gone, vanishing into thin air — or some other dimension — right in the middle of some hip- and eye-rolling routine.
Then it’s back to Stuart Pankin, playing both the fuddled, slap-happy professor (who allegedly has invented something called “Real-O-Vision”) and the voice of his little flying mechanical servant/nemesis Max. Pankin is an actor large enough, both physically and technically, to dominate even an IMAX screen. And a little of his comic specialties — his ability to grin, get flustered and scream in frustration — goes a long way here.
For those who want to see the evolution of 3-D, “Encounter” presents it concisely and sometimes amusingly. For those who want to see how far 3-D, and IMAX, can take us these days, it’s an impressive ride. (You won’t forget those computerized roller coaster tear-alongs any time soon.) I’d recommend it for kids, Elvira and all. But, as for their adult companions: Well, your tolerance for roller coaster rides and cute robot probably depends on the state of your mind — and stomach.
”ENCOUNTER IN THE THIRD DIMENSION”
(star) (star) 1/2
Directed by Ben Stassen; written by Stassen, Kurt Frey; photographed (in 70 mm 3-D) and edited by Sean MacLeod Phillips; production designed by Anthony Huerta; lead animation by Jeremie Degruson, Sylvain Delaine; music by Louis Vyncke; produced by Charlotte Clay Huggins. An nWave release of an Iwerks Entertainment, Luminair and Movida presentation; opens Wednesday at the Navy Pier IMAX Theater. Running time: 0:40. No MPAA rating; family (with some scary scenes).
THE CAST
The Professor/Voice of Max ………………… Stuart Pankin
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark ….. Elvira (Cassandra Peterson)
Narrator ………………………………… Harry Shearer
Ruth in the Booth ………………………. Andrea Thompson
