The Intergalactic Adventures of Max Cloud

Max Cloud is typical trash of the VoD era. Whereas in the age of VHS, trashy films were sold through packaging that clearly targeted one specific group of viewers, today some genre productions conversely suffer from trying to chase too many rabbits in the interest of reaching as many people as possible in the algorithmic recommendations. So, here we have a bizarre combination of Jumanji, 1990s retro, nostalgia for 8-bit video games, cardboard science fiction and a few Scott Adkins flicks. Adkins himself comes out best by far from the whole mishmash, and not just because he was given space in maybe two scenes, where he pulled off some very fine choreography despite the obviously rushed production. Furthermore, it’s good for once to see the likable Adkins in a lighter role where he has room to show off his charisma and sense of humour and exaggeration, as opposed to his usual brooding and angry parts. The rest of the film, however, is a desperate tragedy that collapses under the weight of its unfinished script, where individual sequences exist only because the filmmakers came up with a joke and didn’t want to abandon it or polish it in any way. All of the funding went into the costumes and retro sets, so it’s that much more regrettable that the filmmakers couldn’t sell them with better shot composition. In the interest of squeezing the shooting schedule, a significant number of the scenes are done with one shot and a static camera and thus lack dynamism, resulting in boredom. For Scott Adkins, this is another one of the invigorating acting departures on which he has been focusing a lot in recent years, but it is a rather miserable experience for viewers. Ultimately, the film is engaging as another odd entry in the slowly growing category of early-’90s retro along with, for example, Psycho Goreman, which did an incomparably better job of capturing the phantasmagorical nature of the era. (06/02/2021)