Somehow, while making Grizzly Man, The White Diamond, and the upcoming Rescue Dawn, Werner Herzog found time to toss off this $19.95 version of 2001. Cult icon Brad Dourif plays a down-and-out (i.e., Herzogian) alien who narrates the tale of how his people fled Alpha Centauri millennia ago and settled on Earth. The reason for their lack of impact on world affairs is that “aliens suck.” Meanwhile, terrestrial scientists have mastered the technology to reverse the journey, and the rest of the pseudo-documentary pastiche relates the fortunes of that mission. What Herzog actually shows is footage such as that of a Space Shuttle flight with the crew bouncing around in shorts and socks and chowing down on MREs while weird Sardinian vocals play on the soundtrack. The images, especially those of aquanauts swimming the waters under polar ice purported to be Alpha Centauri’s “sea of liquid helium,” compel more interest than the half-baked sci-fi story line. Too bad Dourif doesn’t pipe down and let the uncanny reality speak for itself.
