As a serious science fiction, I would rate this film about 7 stars. It starts with a routine premise of someone being frozen and woken up later than expected. To this it adds the apocalyptic premises of an underground society and of a world in which all male human genes have been exterminated and society relies on test tubes and parthenogenesis (virgin birth) for procreation. These ideas have often been treated in short stories, novels and films, but the treatment they are getting in this film has no trouble holding up against the competition.
As a comedy, ignoring the science fiction dimension, I would also rate this film about 7 stars. It's a comedy about two men who suddenly find themselves in a society of Amazons who don't know men, don't want them, and wouldn't know what to do with them. But it doesn't overplay this aspect. There is obvious potential for a sex comedy here - and again the film neither shies away from this nor uses it excessively.
What makes this film unique and truly fantastic is how these two dimensions are combined. In a typical science fiction comedy, the laughs come primarily from spoofing the science fiction genre, which is easy to do. That is not how it is done here. This is a regular comedy that just happens to be set in a science fiction setting.
I am not a good judge of actors' abilities, even in languages that I understand, but it seems to me that there is a lot of good character acting here. Only sometimes the guards behave more like comic book characters because that's required by the comedy.
In terms of plot and pacing, this film is also almost exemplary. A kind of trial marks the beginning of the second half, which has a long series of surprises in store for us. Many of them I felt I could have anticipated due to earlier clues - but I didn't. It's always nice when that happens, and here it happened a lot. Towards the end, realism seems to get less important, so that the happy ending has aspects of a dream-like or allegorical ending without really being of this type.
As a comedy, ignoring the science fiction dimension, I would also rate this film about 7 stars. It's a comedy about two men who suddenly find themselves in a society of Amazons who don't know men, don't want them, and wouldn't know what to do with them. But it doesn't overplay this aspect. There is obvious potential for a sex comedy here - and again the film neither shies away from this nor uses it excessively.
What makes this film unique and truly fantastic is how these two dimensions are combined. In a typical science fiction comedy, the laughs come primarily from spoofing the science fiction genre, which is easy to do. That is not how it is done here. This is a regular comedy that just happens to be set in a science fiction setting.
I am not a good judge of actors' abilities, even in languages that I understand, but it seems to me that there is a lot of good character acting here. Only sometimes the guards behave more like comic book characters because that's required by the comedy.
In terms of plot and pacing, this film is also almost exemplary. A kind of trial marks the beginning of the second half, which has a long series of surprises in store for us. Many of them I felt I could have anticipated due to earlier clues - but I didn't. It's always nice when that happens, and here it happened a lot. Towards the end, realism seems to get less important, so that the happy ending has aspects of a dream-like or allegorical ending without really being of this type.