Sunshine Screened For UK Critics: What's The Verdict?

Sunshine has been screened for UK critics. I was not invited, and those that were have been asked to keep schtum. Was it any good?

Well, most of the crowd liked it, it seems. Not everybody though. Nobody would even go on the record with me, but let me tell you: they made it obvious that this film can be quite easily rubbished if you want to rip it down.

I admitted to one of the lucky folk at the screening that I wasn't expecting much from the film at all. I've only seen what the rest of us have, really: posters, trailers, a couple of clips, all of the behind the scenes blogging, but a few things did strike me as rather silly already.

I gave, as an example, the name of the spaceship that's flying our characters towards the sun. They've only gone and named it Icarus II. Riiiiiiiight. That's like naming an Ocean Liner Titanic II, frankly. A daft bit of illogic just to get some pointless reference to mythology shoehorned in.

But then I was told that it's worse than that: the mission presented in the film is a second attempt. Seven years prior to these events, there was another try - on board the plain old Icarus. Sigh.

So not only did they decide to name the first ship Icarus, when it vanished and they had to try again, they called the next one Icarus II. Trust me - I'm not superstitious at all, but most people are and a name like that would never fly - if you pardon the expression.

Negative terms I could coax out of the lucky few? Portentous. Indulgent. Smug. Silly.

Sunshine will be out in the UK in just a few weeks, and then buried in the December schedules in the US. It's the cast I feel sorry for.