Savage Planet

_**Planet of the Prehistoric Bears**_

In the year 2068 Earth’s natural resources are almost depleted, so a corporation uses a deep space transporter to send a team to a planet 20,000 light years away in order to acquire a new source of oxygen for Earth. Sean Patrick Flanery (the eponymous character in 1995’s “Powder”) plays the protagonist and Reagan Pasternak his potential romantic interest. Meanwhile Roman Podhora plays the corporation mastermind and Joel Keller his lackey.

“Savage Planet” (2006) is typical of movies from the 2000s that debuted on Syfy. It’s useless to complain about the lousy CGI, like the gaudy regeneration of a person’s hand shown at the beginning, because that’s just expected. Grade C movies like this don’t have the funds for anything better.

Looking beyond that obvious drawback, this is basically a survival movie in the low-low-budget tradition of “Planet of Dinosaurs” (1977). The later “Ferocious Planet” (2011) ripped it off for a similar (and superior) movie with a different creature. It’s sorta like Star Trek when a team beams down to an Earth-like planet, but without phasers, tricorders and uniforms. Flanery is effective as the masculine protagonist.

Meanwhile the three females are a’right (also featuring Marie Ward and Sarah Danielle Madison), but a movie of this ilk really needs someone of the caliber of Beth Rogan in the 1961 version of "Mysterious Island" or Annabelle Wallis & Hannah Tointon in 2010's excellent "The Lost Future"

The film runs 1 hour, 27 minutes, and was shot in Hamilton, Ontario.

GRADE: C