Because the film is so deathly straight-faced, it manages to be a lot of opposite things simultaneously: good and bad, cheesy and cool, ridiculous and impressive, big-budget and low-budget. It's stunningly photographed yet looks totally cheap; it's badly acted yet convincing; it's all over the place yet lucid; it's purposeful yet pointless. The story, set in a futureworld in which people are killed upon reaching the age of 30 (this must have been during the 1,000 year reich of Menudo), involves Logan-5 (Michael York at his preposterously self-assured best) and Jessica-6 (supercutie Jenny Agutter, whose accent comes and goes) bolting utopia and discovering the world outside … and, confirming the facts uncovered by Planet of the Apes, it is our world, and it is an overgrown graveyard. I'm still puzzled about the attempted statement … we must control our ever-growing population? We must not control our ever-growing population? We must be careful about our nation's capitol being overrun by moss, since that so surely spells our doom? We should all learn to love? We should all embrace our freedom? Old is beautiful? Computers can't be trusted? Fuck if I know. Logan's Run careens through so many surreal scenarios that by the end, I had no clue what had been accomplished. From the tightly-controlled "perfect" city (which seems to be a mall), to the strange orgiastic underbelly of the "Love Chamber," to the bizarre frozen underworld ruled by a bellowing robot, to the long-dead ruins of Washington, DC, and back again, the movie is alternately Star Trek, Swiss Family Robinson, Planet of the Apes, and The Fugitive, with no particular coherence, but always with complete confidence. It's too ponderous to provide Star Wars-style thrills, too well-made to deliver the constant belly-laughs of The Apple … even Farrah Fawcett-Majors showing up for an extraordinarily poor cameo performance doesn't manage to elicit more than a quizzical "Hm?" Jerry Goldsmith supplies a cool-ass score full of analog synths, yet the dialogue is so mumbly and quiet that the music sounds overbearing. I can see why people might love the movie (if they're nerds), or hate it (if they are easily bored). As for me: baffled, bored, bemused.
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