Photos courtesy of Netflix
No fighting in the war room!
Until fall quarter at SCAD begins this September, The Binge Watcher will run on a biweekly basis, instead of once a week.
Ah, the Nazis: those goose-stepping, anti-Semitic racist twits who once were – and remain – one of the most terrifying forces of systematic genocide, intolerance and downright ruthlessness humanity has ever had to deal with. I’m glad we’ve come to a point in human history where we’ve unified against them in our hatred of their beliefs, and we can make movies as ridiculous as “Iron Sky.”
After black male model James Washington (Christopher Kirby) lands on the moon as a part of helium resource 
exploration disguised as a publicity stunt to reelect the President of the United States (Stephanie Paul), he’s captured by Nazis who had settled on the dark side of the moon in 1945. After his captors forcibly change his race to Aryan, he is transported home in the company of Klaus Adler ( Götz Otto), führer in the making, and Renate Richter (Julia Dietze), certified expert on the planet Earth. Soon enough, the Nazi’s have taken control over the media with fashionable propaganda and a message of love, biding their time for their total domination of the human race.
And after all that, a 36 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes? Sacrilege.
Director Timo Vuorensola has managed to create a parody of anything and everything. For this, I am thankful because I was seriously afraid when I pressed play that at some point they would try to take themselves seriously. I 
also braced myself for them to be offensive (they were, after all, touching on a terrifying group of people), but they weren’t. If they had been, it would not have been as successful, or nearly as funny. Every 10 seconds they’re making a jab at something new, and they do it seamlessly and without remorse. To name a few, here is what they ruthlessly satirize: “Star Trek” and the science fiction genre, politics, Sarah Palin, The United States of America, the United Nations, North Korea, the fashion industry, “Doctor Strangelove” and other war movies including the famous and often parodied rant from “Downfall,” political socialization through brainwashing, casual and blatant racism, the American public’s overall stupidity as a whole and many, many more. Nothing is sacred, and it’s glorious.
As you’d expect from a movie meant to be viewed while chugging Surge and munching on cheese fries in your 
pajamas, most of the characters are fairly one-dimensional with no degree of serious depth or development. But they’re so great it doesn’t even matter. Symbolizing the United States, the President is Sarah Palin clone who decorates her office with taxidermied wildlife. Her campaign manager, Vivian Wagner (Peta Seargent), is fashionable to death, and ruthless in her revenge after Adler scorns her advances making one seriously pissed off femme fatale. And Doktor Richter (Tilo Prückner) – Renate’s father and chief scientist on the moon base – is mad I tell you, mad. As for the fine people representation us citizens in the United Nations, when the subject of natural resources comes up all hell breaks loose and they do more damage than good. Good old fashioned diplomacy.
Of everyone in the cast, the brightest star is Dietze as Renate. All her life, naive little moon Nazi Renate was told that
Nothing, my dear. You’ll learn soon enough.
the message of her party was love, peace and equality for all. And – apparently – as the sole educator on the moon, that’s the message she passed down to her students. So after she comes to earth and propagates her beliefs, helping the President’s campaign as a speech writer, she’s surprised to learn about the atrocities committed after watching “The Great Dictator” in its entirety; until then, she had only seen the ten minutes of Charlie Chaplin playing with a globe. Renate wastes no time in righting the wrongs of her ancestry, and unites with James to stop Adler from carrying out a blitzkrieg on the planet. She’s adorable, funny, kind, smart and rocks some seriously killer footwear. And as her foil, Adler is ridiculously appropriate as a creepy, power-hungry sociopath dressed head-to-toe in Hugo Boss. We’re glad
Right, because incest is not nasty at all. Gotta keep them bloodlines pure.
she dumps him and finds a romantic connection in James, who charms us from the moment he lands on the moon and teaches her a little thing about racial equality.
Like I said, I went into this worried about how they would portray the Nazis. I applaud everyone involved for taking a subject matter that could easily have taken the moral high ground, but chose to focus on lasers and space blimps. This movie is ridiculous, it knows its ridiculous and I’m glad it happened. And the best part? It’s only 90 minutes. Watch this immediately.
