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Plot Summary
As this science fiction classic opens, botanist Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern) has spent eight years aboard the space freighter "Valley Forge" preserving the only botanical specimens left from Earth under huge geodesic domes. When he receives orders to destroy the project and return home, Lowell rebels and hijacks the freighter, while plunging the craft into the gaseous Rings of Saturn. From that moment on, he has only the trees, the gardens and two "Drone" robots, Huey and Dewey, to keep him company on his greatest adventure of all.
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Rotten Tomatoes Movie Reviews
TOMATOMETER
67%- Reviews Counted: 27
- Fresh: 18
- Rotten: 9
- Average Rating: 6.6/10
Top Critics' Reviews
Rotten: Silent Running is no jerry-built science fiction film, but it's a little too simple-minded to be consistently entertaining.
Fresh: ... a movie out of the ordinary -- especially if you like science fiction.
Fresh: The film is enjoyable for its intimacy, seriousness, and intelligent character work, virtues not perpetuated by the subsequent new wave.
Fresh: Among the most intelligent and entertaining sci-fi films of the 1970.
Customer Reviews
Outstanding!
I saw this movie when it first aired in 1971. Back then, the movie was an early warning. Bruce Dern was excellent in this role as caretaker for the last of Earth's plant life. The end of the movie is truely touching. I would recommend this movie to anyone concerned obout global warming or to anyone who truely cares about saving our forests.
Groundbreaking effects fot it's time.
This movie came years before Star Wars, (which Douglas Trumbull also worked on.), and you can clearly see how it influenced the later movie. The Joan Baez music may come off as a little campy now, but I really enjoyed this as a kid, and am glad itunes has made it available.
Frozen in a Time Warp
This is a slow-paced film with much virtue. It was ahead of its time in predicting the ecological problems earth faces. A few of the wide-eyed, hysterical speeches Lowell makes to his insensitive shipmates, nail the point environmentalist are still trying to make today. It is worth overlooking the short-comings of this film, shot way back in 1971, when Hippies roamed the earth, because of the sincerity of the film's intent. The sound track wallows in gooey tunes sung by Joan Baez and the CGI is in its infancy. I doubt it received much attention in its time because its message seemed implausible. Seeing it in 2010 helps me to appreciate the drama of the persistent degradation of our environment in light of almost 40 years of determined people trying to get the message communicated. Perhaps it is true, we will simply annihilate the earth's natural world and shrug it off. it is happening, even as I write.
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- $14.99
- Genre: Sci-Fi & Fantasy
- Released: 1972
- © 1972 Universal Pictures, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.