John Travolta and Forest Whitaker do some
Hollywood slumming in this tenement of a sci-fi
thriller.
You know, I do my best to keep from saying a film
is "bad." A good teacher finds little use in
value-judging a report by a student. There are so
many criteria that we can "objectively" talk about --
strong here, weak there etc. But this is just one of
those scripts that you know the student must have
whipped out five minutes before class.
I'm really surprised with all the writing talent
available in this town, that no one said "Hey, this
is just a bad script."
And the only reason I can think that Travolta and
Whitaker did it was to spoof themselves; relax in the
lowest-of-brow movies to wind down from a thick
script or something. Perhaps it was a dare? Maybe
they lost a bet?
Of course, they're decent, even the lead hero is
good - as good as you can possibly be with nearly
nothing verbally to work with (in fact at times
nothing would have been better said). The acting is
not the problem. Even the premise is decent ... it's
the contrived conflicts, advancements and worst of
all the dialogue of this film that makes one
embarrassed to be a lover of movies.
Basically, it's the year 3000, an ugly group of
corrupt back-stabbing aliens (the Psychlo's) have
wiped out nearly all Earthlings and the remaining few
are used as slaves to mine gold for their home planet
(I'm not sure why gold is valuable to aliens). Until
... one of those slaves decides to fight for ... you
guessed it "Freedom!"
Introductory dialogue is expository and would have
been better left to "Star Wars" type text preface.
The look of the film is a bit too digital. Our hero gets shot
through a series of glass windows in shattering
slow-mo - and yet, it's just not thrilling.
Travolta (lead Psychlo) in an effort to better
control the humans explains, "We'll let it think it's
escaped, just to see what food it likes best..." as
if the monopoly on oxygen wasn't enough to motivate
"it". But, the scheme gets even more ridiculous,
instead of killing this rebel human (who had already
vaporized a couple of Psychlo guards) Travolta
teaches it to speak Psychlo and then gives it access
to a library of knowledge. (Yeah, that should teach
it to behave!)
Of course, now armed with brains, brawn and
revolutionary fervor, the lead human proclaims to the
mass of human slaves waving rocks and sticks, "We're
going to blow up their home planet ... of course,
we'll need some extra supplies." The delivery of this
line was met with a robust round of chuckles from the
audience.
But, alas, there is rarely a film that has nothing
at all redeeming to offer. So due, here are a few
kudos to those things well done: Shot of hero from
bottom cage of craft as it lifts off ground is strong
and visually stirring! In fact, the alien transport
units were created and manipulated well - they look
very good on screen. Language nuances were handled
nicely. To the Psychlo's the chattering of humans
sounded like "Ooga ooga" animalistic or fraternal (in
the college sense of the word). While the Psychlo
utterances warp into English so that we, the audience
can understand them (w/o subtitles). Lastly,
ten-year-olds may very well enjoy this film.
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