Interkosmos

For a tribute to a Soviet Space programme to colonise Jupiter's largest moons - needless to say it never was, and that we're in mock- rather than documentary space here - it's perhaps unkind to say that this ultra low budget American independent film is lacking a real sense of mission, but it's true.

There are some nice ideas, most notably a parody of a crudely animated children's TV series, featuring a guinea pig in space - the later contextualising explanation being that the animal was a popular East German pet and the symbol of international youth socialism.

Unfortunately there aren't enough of them to sustain the film, even at a brief 70-odd minutes. Some sequences, like the various conversations between a male and female cosmonaut that occur over the unchanging vistas of space, every remark punctuated by a semi-realistic period of several seconds of silence as the radio waves travel the distance between them, or the interminable music video style training routines of the crews, should have been severely trimmed. Others, like a Soviet Cheerleader Busby Berkely routine in which two teams of hockey players end up forming a human hammer and sickle - and which sounds a whole lot better inaccurately described thus than it is to sit through for five minutes - should probably never have been included in the first place.