An anachronistic dinosaur, Captain Eager is dragged out of retirement to save the universe one more time. Employed by MacroSpace to deal with the villainous Colonel Regamun, Eager enlists the help of Jenny, who has a crush on him, Scamp the Space Dog and his old friend Scrutty Baker and sets off in his antiquated ship, the Victory for one last adventure...

Captain Eager and the Mark of Voth is a new film by first time director Simon DaVison. With a combination of CGI, cardboard and washing up bowls, this is homage to the era of heroes which produced Dan Dare.

Given that this is essentially a one man, four year, project you have to admire DaVison for ever getting the film made, though like most one man projects he really could have done with someone casting a different critical eye over the project.

James Vaughan, who has found steady work guesting on various television shows, plays the square chinned Eager, portraying him with all the simpleton gung-ho which made Dan Dare and Flash Gordon so popular, funny for a few minutes, but this restricts Vaughan’s ability to make the Captain anything other than a two dimensional person. Tamsin Greig (Shaun of the Dead, Black Books, Green Wing) does a little better with her character, Jenny, as does Mark Heap (Spaced, Green Wing, Lark Rise to Candleford) who plays Scrutty, but even here the script leaves them little room to flex their comedic muscles. The characterisations are just as stiff as the sometimes cardboard sets.

Visually the film's sepia approach is reminiscent of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and is by far the most accomplished part of the movie.

But, whereas Sky Captain treated its innate silliness with a degree of reverence Captain Eager just uses it as an excuse to take the p*ss out of the genre. Unfortunately the joke - and I'm afraid to report that sadly there does appear to be only one joke - wears a bit thin. 

For the most part the film is amusing. I can put up with amusing for about half an hour, but at one and a half hours, the film was just too long. Strangely enough, with a tighter script and a lot of trimming this might have made a fairly good TV show, after all this approach worked for Lexx.

There is no doubt that the film will find an audience but I feel that this will be on DVD rather than as a cinema release.

4

Charles Packer

A special family screening will take place on 20 April at the ICA, London.
Tamsin Greig, Mark Heap, Richard Leaf and director Simon DaVison will be attending for a Q&A session.

Venue: ICA, The Mall, London, SWIY 5AH
Bookings Tel: 020 7930 3647
www.ica.org.uk