Matrixston Wow! Such a good movie.

GazerRise Fantastic!

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

davidcarniglia The best thing about Phantom Planet is its title. But it's not terrible; there's an earnestness about the tone that makes you want to see what happens, given about a ten-year-old's sense of adventure.The plot's pretty good too: once stuff gets in gear on Rheton, we've got a primitive/advanced civilization living underground with new-age doodads poking out of the rocks, a formal duel over the coolest girl, a Snauffaluffagus monster, and invading flaming marshmallows. The cunning strategy that the Captain and his rival go in on makes sense and provides a convenient resolution for the story.I can't figure out how the monster gets loose if he's supposedly walled off with a force field. Thankfully he's dumb enough to stand on the anti-gravity thingie before he makes off with the dark-haired chick.What hurts Phantom Planet is the long lead-up to the landing on Rheton. I agree with the reviewer who sees the poignancy in the astronaut praying as he realizes that he's doomed to drift in space. But what's an astronaut doing trying to fix a spacecraft with a crescent wrench? Not to mention the fact that there's a bit of an atmospheric issue when he wrenches the inspection plate off, obviously ruining the oxygen inside the ship. Phantom Planet is worth a look for a decent story, and for special effects, some fairly cool and some just dorky. But ten stars for some pithy comments from other reviewers: especially zardoz-13's description of Rheton as "crispy chunks of fried chicken," and dougdoepke likening the spacecraft to "a candied dart." Those are some slick sci-fi fans right there.

topeka Classic black and white B movie silliness. Pay attention to the "monster" - the Solorite prisoner. That's Richard Kiel, better known as Jaws, and star of many wonderful films.The film begins with an annoying narration. In the first 'action' scene, we are introduced to two characters by literally introducing them. It's on par with that short story we wrote in third grade. Then those two guys get blown out of the sky by an asteroid. After that, the rest of the film is a dramatic improvement. It appears to have been filmed in one small studio with a minimum of sets, and virtually no special effects. Only a kid at heart who loves theater and science fiction would appreciate this small 'gem.' One has to think of it more as civic theater than as a movie production. Phantom Planet took its inspiration from early 20th century pulp fiction and a lot of 'Tarzan' but it managed to fail utterly.

Bezenby I rather enjoyed this amazingly daft sci-fi film. There's just something about hokey effects, pseudo-science, astronauts recording their thoughts on cassette and the brain scratching physics on display. It's 1980 (!) and man has a spaceport on the moon, sending out manned rockets here and there. Problem is, these rockets keep crashing on a dwarf plant that can seemingly move around the solar system at will, and it's up to astronaut Frank Chapman to sort things out! The US are already two ships down by the time Frank heads out there with his buddy, and Frank's not about sticking to the rules, so in order to find a random planet that flies about the place, he goes off course and it's not long before the ship is being wrecked by meteorites. Frank and his buddy go outside to fix things and Frank get's beaned on the head by a tiny rock, but his mate gets him onboard before he himself is battered by a rock and drifts out into space. Frank comes to just in time to steer the rocket onto the Phantom Plant.This is where the film get (even) dafter, because Frank crawls out of his ship and meets loads of tiny men, but don't worry about that. Didn't Stephen Hawking mathematically prove that a physical body will shrink to adapt to its environment? He didn't? Well that's what happens here as Chapman shrinks to the size of everyone else and soon finds himself on charges of assault. Also, they all speak English and lives in caves but can steer their planet about. Yep.So Frank is found guilty but that means nothing as he's set free as long as he doesn't try and escape. He also gets into a duel with a guy and there's a mute girl making goo goo eyes at him. Just when you think Frank's about to go native (and to be honest just when things started getting boring) a bunch of aliens called the Solarites turn up and start attacking everyone! Thank the Gods for them as this bunch of crazy eyed bovver boys tear around the place in ships made of fire. Can Champ Frankman sort them out, grow big again, and go home? You'll have to watch the film to see or at least look up the plot on Wikipedia or even go and do something worthwhile with your life instead.Films like the Phantom Planet are far too daft to hate. Full of cheesy effects (including the rockets ships, the look of the Solarites, and the brain damaging 'science) and the kind of rugged guys who always do okay as long as there's someone to sock on the jaw, this one was a good laugh back in those naive days before we discovered that space was full of a whole load of nothing.

Alex da Silva Dean Fredericks (Captain Frank Chapman) and Richard Weber (Lt Makonnen) are sent into space to search for the previous rocket and occupants that seems to have disappeared. They go into the unknown where they come across a meteor shower that damages their ship but only Fredericks survives the repair mission that they undergo, before he and his ship are sucked into the gravitational pull of a large meteorite. Or is it a planet inhabited by tiny people? The majority of the film plays out on this meteorite/planet before Fredericks is picked up by a rescue mission. Has it all been a dream? The cast are pretty wooden but so what. The film has a nice idea that leaves you thinking at the end. The effects are funny but still entertaining - watch as popcorn threatens the rockets and how about those flying, squeeling pigs? This is a story with a romance that lends itself to a sadness and it creates a romantic tragedy type of film. I thought that this film would be a heap of junk but I was pleasantly surprised. It's nothing great but it's a fantasy type film where everything is certainly real to Dean Fredericks.