As co-writer, co-director and star of brainless Mad Max rip-off Future World, James Franco seems to be channelling the spirit of cack-handed filmmaker Tommy Wiseau – the subject of his hilarious 2017 biopic The Disaster Artist.
The setting here is yet another of those post-apocalyptic desert wastelands beloved of sci-fi movies and Franco plays the villain, a cackling sadist who goes by the name Warlord and leads a tribe of scummy motorbike-riding raiders.
The movie’s hero is Prince (Jeffrey Wahlberg, nephew of Mark), a callow youngster roaming the badlands in search of medicine to save his ailing mother, Lucy Liu’s Queen (the names are all like this). And its heroine is Ash (Suki Waterhouse), an android controlled by Warlord but with a burgeoning spirit of her own.
Along the way, the pair fall in and out of the clutches of various other baddies, including Snoop Dogg’s futuristic strip-club owner Love Lord and Milla Jovovich’s junkie clan leader Drug Lord, but the action is slow and disjointed and the fight and chase scenes are feeble.
Yes, Franco’s film really is awful, but it’s also weirdly watchable – if only for Jovovich’s eye-popping turn and for the spectacle of Waterhouse stomping through the desert with her catwalk-model strut.
Certificate 15. Runtime 98 mins. Directors James Franco, Bruce Thierry Chung
Future World available on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital from Spirit Entertainment.
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