SOUNDS LIKE THE FILM ADAPTATION OF AMERICA ALONE:

Z.P.G. ZERO POPULATION GROWTH (Greg Klymkiw, 4/05/09, Daily Film Dose)

There is a particular and peculiar brand of bleakness that no decade before or since the 1970s managed to bring to the big screen in the genre of dystopian science fiction. Alfonso Cuaron’s “Children of Men” (2006) comes very close and it’s perhaps the best contemporary example of a film that creates a world so mired in hopelessness that simple acts of humanity, while seeming to be extraordinarily noble, also feel utterly and resolutely futile. Cuaron’s picture also feels like a perfect companion piece to Michael Campus’s “Z.P.G.”, a forgotten (albeit flawed) minor gem from 1971 that has managed to sneak its way onto the DVD shelves via Legend Films ongoing series of neglected Paramount Pictures releases.

The major difference between the two (aside from obvious production value and budget) is that the central issue of population control in one is by decree whereas in the other, it is due to the forces of nature. In “Z.P.G.”, a world as polluted and ruled by martial law as in Cuaron’s film, people do want to have children, but are outlawed by Big Brother against doing so to keep the ever-increasing world numbers down.

The central characters Russ and Carol McNeil (Oliver Reed and Geraldine Chaplin respectively) are a childless couple working as performers in a live museum installation piece devoted to presenting typical domestic situations from the past. They work opposite another couple, George and Edna Borden (Don Gordon and Diane Cilento). The scenarios these two couples engage in for the edification of museum goers reflect a past that was the swinging late-60s and as such, they present a tale of wife swapping which is meant to be as titillating as it is a morality play.

Both couples are childless, but within the world of Z.P.G., all couples are allowed to “adopt” cyber children. These are not the almost-human Haley Joel Osments of Spielberg’s “A.I.”, but are creepy, mannequin-like dolls. The Bordens are perfectly content with their doll-child, but the McNeils are unable to succumb to the status quo and are not only childless, but sans the aforementioned creepy doll-child. When the McNeils decide to have a real baby in secret, they risk their lives. Eerie scenes of pod-like citizens ratting out families with real babies have a strange power to disturb, but nothing is more disturbing in this movie than when the McNeils inadvertently let the Bordens in on their secret and the childless couple demands private face time with the real child.