John Johnson
Enjoyable satire of race in America, told as a spoof of 1950's science fiction B-movies.I saw this twice in the studio in Kansas where a lot of the filming was done. I liked it. Laughed numerous times. Learned stuff.No budget, but good script, good story, decent to good acting, and pleasant low-budge rockets and special effects.The story is of W. E. B. DuBois and other prominent African-Americans deciding in 1939 that the only way to solve the race problem in America is for black people to colonize Mars. They plan to make it the Negro Planet. Scouts are sent on a rocket (with radioactive peanut fuel designed by George Washington Carver) to explore, but they fall into a time warp and end up in our contemporary America.The explorers have various off-beat adventures showing how race relations have improved in some ways but remained toxic in other ways.Some of the scenes should have been cut to serve the story, but evidently director/writer/actor Willmott decided to place commentary over story at times.One of my favorite lines was a little throw-away remark when one of the explorers was told that the N-word has been taken out of Huckleberry Finn, because the N-word is so offensive.The pilot says something to effect that he finds slavery more offensive, and yet you left that part in. A lot of scenes in the movie show the weird relationship between the way we talk about race and the realities of race. Other parables and allegories like that throughout. Definitely worth an hour and a half of your time. Reminded me a little of The Brother from Another Planet. It's funny and a think-piece.
