Supporting Victims: Joel Fuernsinn, Idris Hsi
On the other hand, David Duchovny isn't exactly Bill Murray. Orlando Jones isn't exactly Dan Aykroyd. This film isn't as funny as Ghostbusters and it's easy to chalk it up to the cast-- but that's not the whole story. The script really wasn't up to it; it's almost as if half the movie got dropped on the cutting room floor. A number of gags are presented that don't follow through, and at the movie you feel like you're still owed a few punch lines. Scuttlebutt has it that the movie was supposed to be a sci-fi thriller before Reitman was brought on board. This implies two things:
1) The movie was bad enough that they couldn't sell it as a sci-fi thriller, so they tried the comedy angle. Considering that Event Horizon was released, I can't begin to imagine how it must have sucked.We open the movie with Wayne Green (Seann William Scott), a not-so-bright local resident of Glen Canyon, Arizona, practicing fire-rescue using a burning shack and an inflatable love doll when a meteor comes in and demolishes his car. The asteroid carries microbes of alien origin. The local Geology professor (Orlando Jones) is called in to take a look at it, and he brings his buddy the Biology professor (David Duchovny) for fun. Turns out the asteroid's microbes are evolving at an extraordinary rate, and eventually it's determined that if they're not stopped they'll take over the world.2) The movie was written by folks who don't do comedy. Reitman helps out a good bit here, but without a comedic screenwriter (Harold Ramis comes to mind...), we lose a lot.
While the movie finds itself wanting compared to the original bunch-of- misfit - scientists - are - forced - to - solve - the - problem - of - a - paranormal - menace - that - will - take - over - the - world movie, it's not a bad movie in itself. While Jones and Duchovny don't really make the world's greatest comedy duo, they're passable in their roles. Julianne Moore's role as the klutzy CDC scientist who turns against Mr. Peck, er, General Woodman (Ted Levine), probably couldn't have been better acted. I wish that was saying something. Then there's Scott's character who, as best as I can tell, exists only to bring a fire truck into the picture for the end of the movie.
I could talk about the science in the movie but I wouldn't be able to manage through the hysterical laughter. This movie falls squarely into the category of "no science texts were harmed nor were their spines cracked in the filming of this movie." The periodic table of elements appears briefly as a really silly plot device on Moore's T-shirt. Her Periodic Table T-shirt wasn't half as cool as mine (Editor's note: J.D. owns a t-shirt that has a periodic table on it where the radioactive elements glow in the dark).
The special effects also failed to live up to expectations. Nothing here was groundbreaking (well, perhaps in a more literal fashion...), so it's not really big-screen fare. Add in a soundtrack that was so impressive that I can't remember how it sounded, and the circle is complete; this movie is the Anti-Ghostbusters.
Despite all this, I walked out of the theater having been entertained. The movie is in no danger of winning any Academy Awards, but there's enough here to make it worth a video rental on a rainy afternoon. There are just too many jokes that don't happen, and a number of them were potentially amusing, that I suspect even my co-victims may have grinned at least once each. In short, it's a comedy that isn't funny and a sci-fi movie with lots of fiction and hardly any science.
I give this movie a 2 on the good movie scale and a 5 on the bad movie scale.
Our Drive-In Totals:
A few dozen dead human bodies
352 tiny dead alien bodies
38 medium dead alien bodies
18 large dead alien bodies
3 really large dead alien bodies
1 really humongous dead alien body
0 human breasts
? alien breasts
10 DNA base pairs
Multicellular single-cell organisms
Two drunk selenium finders
"Alien" (the movie) ripoff
Giant enema
1 gratuitous alien butt shot
1 fire truck
1 trashed army jeep (too expensive to trash an HMMWV, I suppose)
2 Periodic Tables
1 sieve-like containment area
3 alien monkeys...
6 trashed videocameras
500 gallons of Head n' Shoulders
Kung Fu
Gun Fu
Claw Fu
Teeth Fu
Firehose Fu
Firehose Nozzle Fu
Shotgun Fu (but no "Nice shootin', Tex.")
Bug Fu
Meteor Fu
Pseudopod Fu
Napalm Fu
Pistol Fu
Alien Second Head Fu
Air Fu
Sham Fu
Good Movie Scale: 2
Bad Movie Scale: 5
