Now we all know Dolph Lundgren is not best know for being in many box office hit movies, Rocky four not included that is. However I think its more then safe to say Masters of the universe has to be one of them. A poor budget movie with poor effects, acting, storyline & just about everything else. In one word the only word I can find to describe this movie is poor!

Cannon movie based on the popular toy line and cartoon series from my childhood. I should say loosely based, as it rips off everything from Star Wars to Flash Gordon, all the while borrowing precious little of worth from the He-Man mythos and purportedly being a tribute of sorts to Jack Kirby's New Gods. You could look at all those connections and say "well this just sounds like a pile of awesome" but you would be wrong.I hated this movie with a passion when I was a kid, mainly because it felt nothing like the He-Man I knew and more like some generic sci-fi action movie that had the Masters of the Universe name attached. But over the years I've grown to appreciate a lot of movies I didn't like when they were first released. And I do appreciate this more than I did then, but I'm still not ready to say it's a good film. Its value is in its badness, particularly Frank Langella's delightfully campy performance as Skeletor. Unfortunately he's not in the entire movie. The bulk of the film takes place on Earth with He-Man and friends running around with Courteney Cox and trying not to be killed by the goons Skeletor has sent after them. Most of this is just boring.Other than Langella, the cast is either adequate (Meg Foster, Courteney Cox, Jon Cypher, James Tolkan) or terrible (Billy Barty). Dolph Lundgren is wooden to the point that it makes his previous performance as Drago in Rocky IV seem like Hamlet. The budget is obviously very low and the costumes and special effects are cheesy. It's worth a look for fans of Cannon and He-Man. See it for the campiness and fast-forward to the Skeletor scenes.

Of all the things to admire about Frank Langella, and there are many, one of the more obscure is that his role here, as the villain Skeletor, is one of his favourites. Here's man who's been nominated for Oscars, been picky with the roles he's selected over a long career, and one of his favourite roles was playing a masked Shakespearean villain in a movie made on the cheap for kids that few people saw. Gotta respect that.So let's go back in time to the 1980s, and He-Man, subtle homosexual overtones and all, was King of Cartoon Land. "I have the POWER!!!" If you were young at the time, you know exactly what I'm talking about. So it was only a matter of time before a Hollywood studio got hold of the property and made a movie. Enter Cannon Films, makers of such masterpieces as Superman 4, The (ex)Terminator, and The Happy Hookers, to try and milk this cash cow.As the hero of the film we have Dolph Lundgren, just off the boat from Sweden and speaking his lines phonetically. And that will make a lot of his performance in this make sense. Poor guy literally has no idea what he's saying. He-Man is trying to save the kingdom of Eternia from Skeletor (Langella) who's forces have captured the Sorceress of Gray-Skull (Christina Pickles-nice name). Old Skull boy wants to take the Sorcerer's power and add it to his own while making some awesome Shakespearean monologues to his henchmen. To make matters worse Grinners has also stolen the mysterious "cosmic key" off a Dark Crystal reject. The key enables Skels to travel wherever he wants to in the Universe by playing a tune, which makes me wonder where he will end up if he plays Sweet Dreams by the Eurhythmics. Luckily He-Man is able to steal the key, and not wanting to get his ass kicked by the baddies at Castle Gray-Skull (including Evil-Lyn, played by Meg Foster, who I really need to introduce somewhere in this plot summary) He-Man and some offsiders cosmically leg it to Earth. Joining He-Man we have Man-at-Arms (a likable turn from Jon Cypher) his daughter Teela (Chelsea Field-The Last Boyscout), and the afore mentioned Dark Crystal reject Gwildor (Billy Barty, Nope, me neither).Once on earth they lose the key and it's found by Kevin (Robert Duncan McNeil of Star Trek Voyager fame) who thinks it's some darn fangle new Synthesizer. He has a girlfriend Julie (Courtney Cox) and eventually they get sucked into the main plot as the Laughing Langella and his forces come to earth to retrieve the key. Also dragged along is Detective Lubic (James Tolkan, the Principal from the Back to the Future films) and they all end up in Eternia to listen to another Langella monologue and eventually see He-Man save the Sorceress and kick Skeletor's ass.This movie is made on the cheap, and has a star who literally doesn't know what he's doing, or saying, or what anyone is saying to him. But what it does have aside from that is a surprising amount of fun. And I don't mean laughing at the movie, though there is certainly opportunity to do that in spades, but I mean the type of fun that is just you, as the viewer, enjoying yourself watching these guys. Front and centre of the enjoyment is Langella who relishes the opportunity to use his theatre training to run off on some truly glorious monologues. But I like a lot of the minor players in this too O'Neill and Cox get into this, as does Cypher. Foster, who apparently was sweltering in her costume for most of the filming, gives a perfectly acceptable portrayal of a villainess/ evil lackey.Masters of the Universe has a hero and a story who, apart from the homo-erotic subtext, are far removed from the cartoon. It's cheap, and obviously so, and has a lead actor giving a performance that has to be seen to be believed. It's no surprise at all that it bombed, and bombed huge. But that doesn't mean you can't enjoy this. This is the type of film that, if you were switching through channels on your TV on a rainy afternoon, you could put on and be pleasantly diverted, and sometimes that's all a movie needs to be. By no means Masterful, but hardly embarrassing. Ultimately, to summarise: not good, but it'll do.

I remember hating this when I was a kid, I'm guessing because they changed so much stuff from my beloved cartoon. Of course, the cartoon was garbage in the first place, I realize now, only existing to sell toys. The toys were pretty cool. Revisiting the film almost 30 years later, and knowing that it came from the Canon Film Group, I was hoping for a dumpster fire of a film, something my friend and I could laugh at. Unfortunately, it's borderline competent, which is quite a bit worse. It's more or less a rip-off of Star Wars and Conan the Barbarian. The script is awful, but the production design and costumes are very good. Cheaper than Star Wars, obviously, but still not bad at all. Frank Langella plays the villain, Skeletor, fairly well, and Meg Foster is a good henchwoman to him. The heroes are less interesting, with Dolph Lundgren as He-Man (most annoying, he's off screen for long periods of time). The film is perhaps most famous now for co-starring a young Courtney Cox. The film as a whole is kind of a bore and pretty forgettable, which is probably how I felt as a kid, too.