I saw this in college with the rest of the UMass-Boston SF Society gang, and no, this is no classic, nor was meant to be.
Like "Hudson Hawk," a light-hearted comedy unjustly slagged because moviegoers who'd never seen Moonlighting couldn't hack Bruce Willis not wading through bullet storms (and because judging from the MSTK-driven bottom 50 on IMDb, pack mentality rules), "Ice Pirates" bombed because most SF fans of the generation couldn't stand their genre mixed with humor; witness the prompt implosion just a couple years before of the very witty TV show "Quark" after only a handful of eps.
Maybe "Galaxy Quest" -- which spoofed the syndrome -- and "3rd Rock" changed the paradigm, but twenty years ago, SF fandom still expected to see Shatneresque painfully earnest pomposity in their futuristic dramas. Urich didn't deliver; his bad. Ice Pirates would no doubt do better now.
7/10.
Like "Hudson Hawk," a light-hearted comedy unjustly slagged because moviegoers who'd never seen Moonlighting couldn't hack Bruce Willis not wading through bullet storms (and because judging from the MSTK-driven bottom 50 on IMDb, pack mentality rules), "Ice Pirates" bombed because most SF fans of the generation couldn't stand their genre mixed with humor; witness the prompt implosion just a couple years before of the very witty TV show "Quark" after only a handful of eps.
Maybe "Galaxy Quest" -- which spoofed the syndrome -- and "3rd Rock" changed the paradigm, but twenty years ago, SF fandom still expected to see Shatneresque painfully earnest pomposity in their futuristic dramas. Urich didn't deliver; his bad. Ice Pirates would no doubt do better now.
7/10.