January 2, 2023

Very much a vehicle for David Bowie, this is otherwise a rather derivative and unimaginative story of an alien ("Newton") who arrives on Earth, naked and penniless. He is tasked with trying to find a way to save his own doomed planet, but quickly discovers that he has skills! He can make money, and money buys nice things; it buys nice sex; it gives him power... All of these pleasures distract him from the purpose of his visit. Can he refocus? Wel… read the rest.

Very much a vehicle for David Bowie, this is otherwise a rather derivative and unimaginative story of an alien ("Newton") who arrives on Earth, naked and penniless. He is tasked with trying to find a way to save his own doomed planet, but quickly discovers that he has skills! He can make money, and money buys nice things; it buys nice sex; it gives him power... All of these pleasures distract him from the purpose of his visit. Can he refocus? Well his infatuation with "Mary-Lou" (Candy Clark) isn't helping, nor are those around him - "Bryce" (Rip Torn) amongst them - with their own rather parasitic agendas, and his own character undergoes quite a few transformations as his exposure to the Earth and all of it's frequently conflicting moralities presents him with quite a few challenges. To be perfectly honest, I was rather bored with this. It offers us a smorgasbord of humanity with little context or character depth. Bowie is attractive to look at - sometimes - but really isn't much of an actor and at over 2¼ hours long, the plot had little option but to recycle itself - in various thinly disguised guises - just once too often for me. Stomu Yamashta's score is heavy overused, I thought, and by the end I really wasn't so very bothered whether or not he succeeded. As an observation of 1970s priorities, aspirations and excesses, it is quite illustrative I suppose, but as a film to see on a big screen it is really nothing at all to write home about, sorry.

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