videorama-759-859391
You will find parts of this movie, little segments of it, embarrassingly funny. When I first saw it in 84, it was engrossing. When watching it back I 2003, I just found it pretty pathetic, and felt a schmuck for watching back in the eighties. But they were very cheesy and dark times. The same goes for those Airport films, me and Dad ribtickling ourselves over them. What we've got here is a fictional, what if scenario, about a hyposonic airplane, a Concorde shuttle that can make the distance from Los Angeles to Sydney in two hours. In no way is a two second exterior shot of Sydney airport, Sydney airport. What cheek. We have a good cast here too, notably Linden and Majors, one of many few films he did. While in the air, a rocket has exploded sending hulks of a metal careering towards the super cool airplane. Forced to rear up, drastically, they caught in orbit, for which there is no way to return. I remember in olden days, this got incredibly tense. And when the plane set down again, a relief came over me, although a score of passengers got lost in one of those shutes that blew up. But you just take Starflight One for what is it, a guilty cheesy, eighties pleasure, for the whole family, with unintentional laughs here and there.
Blueghost
When I saw this premier on TV I had high hopes that Dykstra would unleash his miniature wizardry on a made for TV movie. I mean, afterall, Star Wars? Star Trek? Battlestar Galactica SFX credits? We all had high hopes. Then the movie aired.Well, to be honest, I don't recall much other than thinking that this was an extension of the Airport Franchise, only the first Airport film at least had some dramatic teeth in it. The subsequent sequels, even one with George Kennedy at the controls of a Concorde, seemed to get ever moreso dreary. Well, Starflight is no different, but, some, and I do emphasize SOME of the FX are decent enough.The truth of the matter is that as per a previous reviewer, kids were savvy enough to know that planes couldn't reach suborbital velocities with the technology as it was explained. Heck, I think even reasonably educated adults probably had a few "huh" moments going for them as the drama unfolded.The shooting style, the acting, the cast, the music, even launching the space shuttle, I could give all of that a pass, even seeing Lee Majors in this thing. But, when they put in the "one thing" that would save them, that's when I finally changed the channel. I think this film aired once more that same year late at night, or the following year during the summer, but, to the best of my knowledge, it never saw the light of day again.If you're bored, need some airborne disaster action on your TV or computer monitor, then maybe give this thing a single viewing, but don't say I didn't warn you.
kerndtsr
It took me a few minutes into the movie to realize I had seen it before when I was in high-school. Even though it had Barney Miller and Lauren "whistle while you work because of the gap between your teeth" Hutton in it I watched it again anyway. They sure can get that space shuttle in and out of space quickly, cant' they? They must of had an Indy 500 crew working for them! Plus they can take off from L.A. too! what a deal! Now the ironic and sad part. At one point the crew of the plane asks the Columbia crew to take a peek and see if there was any damage to their aircraft. So the (the Starflight crew) knew they got hit, NASA knew they got hit, so isn't it great to have another set of eyes (the Columbia crew) to actually see the damage everyone assumed was there in the first place? So they can actually try to fix it, or figure out some other option to avoid a disaster. So why in the world didn't NASA have the REAL Columbia go to the International Space Station and have them see if they had a hole in their wing! The whole country saw the foam hit the wing. STUPID!!!
Eric-62-2
This might have been made in 1983 but it carries the smell of a leftover of the 70s disaster film genre and their many TV knockoffs (director Jerry Jameson being responsible among other things for "Airport 77") with the long litany of big names in the cast and cliche filled subplots. Indeed, "Starflight" is really just a reworking of the 1977 TV-movie "SST: Disaster In The Sky" when you get down to it only this time we have the silly wrinkle of a hypersonic plane getting forced into orbit somehow by accident. There then follows the hilarious implausibility of a single space shuttle that is somehow able to be launched at a moment's notice, then land and relaunch within a couple hours (it actually takes days to get a shuttle hooked up to a new external tank and rocket boosters and then get rolled out to the launch pad). And then get a load of this: Pilot Lee Majors is insistent that the entire crew stay aboard to the end, stewardesses included, but oops, when it comes to the stewardess that he's shacking up with (Lauren Hutton) he makes darn certain that she alone among the crew gets a privileged pass off the ship before the moment of danger comes in re-entry! Guess the moral of the story is if you want to avoid the danger of possible death, make certain you're sleeping around with the people in authority.And by the way "Goulash" from Bombay, if you're a real person who really loved this movie that much, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.....