CLEOPATRA 2525 - COMPLETE SERIES

Cleopatra 2525 - Complete Series

Director: Michael Grossman, Terry Windell
Encoding: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only)
Format: Color
 

Starring: Jennifer Sky
Encoding: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only)
Format: Color, Dolby
Run Time: 757
Number of discs: 3

Movie: * * ½
Disc: * * *  

Cleopatra 2525 is a short-lived TV show produced by director Sam Raimi of Army of Darkness and Spider-man fame that ran 28 episodes back in 2000 and 2001. Filmed in New Zealand for cheap, each episode is intended for a half-an-hour slot and runs a mere 22 minutes (including title sequences).

An exotic dancer (“okay, stripper,” she admits in the pilot episode) with the stage name “Cleopatra” who is cryogenically frozen after a botched boob job to wake up five hundred years in the future. Like Buck Rogers, except Buck was never this curvaceous . . .

Anyway, in this future mankind is forced to live underground since the surface has been taken over by an alien race of giant robots known as Bailys (no, I don’t know why they are called that either).

Cleopatra falls in with two kick-ass female rebels running round in skimpy leather outfits, one of which is actress Gina Torres whom Firefly fans would be quite familiar with. If you were to start watching this rather cheesy and at times lame show half-way through, I think you’d be forgiven for believing that you’ve stumbled into an S&M party since everybody seems to be into risqué leather outfits.

The episodes whilst vacuous are fast and action-packed albeit a bit noisy. Maybe this reviewer is getting too old, but I’m sure I had an onset of tinnitus in some particular loud laser fight sequences.

THE DISCS: Three double-sided discs with minimal extras. There is a bonus Earth 2 episode thrown in for luck (expect an Earth 2 DVD set review on these pages soon).

WORTH IT? As you might have guessed, Cleopatra 2525 isn’t really meant to be taken seriously and none of the actresses do either. Unfortunately the show tries hard to be something it is not, namely funny and clever. (Some of the lines will just make you groan: this sort of “fish out water” thing was done much better in Farscape.)

RECOMMENDATION: Fun in a mindless way, but probably not for all tastes. However, when all else fails, one can always just mindlessly stare at actress Victoria Pratt’s bare, muscular midriff like I did – something I’m sure both the casting director and costume designer had in mind . . .