I looked at this from two perspectives. The first was to compare it against a drama made with a normal multimillion dollar Hollywood budget. It did pretty good. I'd give it a fair six out of ten. It had a good story, passable acting, didn't do anything stupidly wrong or offensive and was generally quite interesting and enjoyable.
Then I considered that it was made for a hundredth of what even a SyFy Channel super cheapie TV movie is made for, a thousandth of what a cheap Hollywood movie like Footloose was made for and one ten thousandth of the budget of a true Hollywood blockbuster turkey like "The Lone Ranger." The New Republic had imagination. It had a good script about a slightly more totalitarian country than ours and it showed that country with very little. It kept you going as our character was sucked away by it.
Was it perfect? No. Was it great? No. It would be about a decent six stars out of ten. But that's not bad - especially when it took $150,000,000 for Mars Needs Moms just to eek out their five stars.
Then I considered that it was made for a hundredth of what even a SyFy Channel super cheapie TV movie is made for, a thousandth of what a cheap Hollywood movie like Footloose was made for and one ten thousandth of the budget of a true Hollywood blockbuster turkey like "The Lone Ranger." The New Republic had imagination. It had a good script about a slightly more totalitarian country than ours and it showed that country with very little. It kept you going as our character was sucked away by it.
Was it perfect? No. Was it great? No. It would be about a decent six stars out of ten. But that's not bad - especially when it took $150,000,000 for Mars Needs Moms just to eek out their five stars.