The much-hyped "Independence Day" is an entertaining no-brainer, well worth $6.25 for those who consider the "Sally Jesse Raphael Show" quality entertainment.
"Independence Day," directed by Roland Emmerich, is not science fiction. Rather than informed conjecture, the silly plot is based on misguided guesses and laughable conspiracy theories.
Certain scenes are so outlandish they are merely annoying -- "suspension of disbelief" is an understatement for what viewers will have to undergo to begin to enjoy this film.
The story is simple.
Slimy, oxygen-breathing telepathic aliens are taking over planet after planet, exhausting natural resources. It is like the Exxon Valdez gone galactic. Giant flying saucers are wiping out city after city, attempting to exterminate the human species.
A weak, unpopular U.S. president (Bill Pullman) retaliates with conventional and nuclear weapons, only to be repulsed by (big surprise) an impenetrable force field.
It looks as if Earth is doomed, until the White House chief-of-staff's hypernerd ex-husband (Jeff Goldblum) invents a computer virus to undermine the force field.
An Air Force pilot (Will Smith) agrees to fly into space with an alien ship recovered by the U.S. military after a crash 40 years before, so the virus can be transmitted to the mother ship.
Luckily, the alien computers are Macintosh-compatible, the force fields fail, the giant flying saucers are destroyed and a nuclear missile takes out the Mother Ship.
Two hours of sustained cliches makes for a miserable movie, and some of the cliches are so saccharine that viewers will undoubtedly squirm in their seats. Perhaps the worst example of kitsch is the president's address to the fighter pilots, when he calls for a "second Independence Day."
It is more sickening than the movie theater popcorn butter.
The movie's ill-conceived message of world peace and ecological responsibility is enough to make a person long for the good old days of pollution and warfare.
Even if it were believable that a jet fighter pilot could successfully navigate an alien ship into outer space, audience members may have a hard time believing some of the movie's other moments, such as when the president, a Gulf War veteran, decides to fly his own plane in a raid on an alien saucer. Of course, it is the president who saves Planet Earth.
Perhaps the most laughable moment is when the decimated U.S. Air Force is forced to recruit an alcoholic crop-duster (who was once abducted by aliens) to fly an F-14 and go on to help the president save the day.
The acting is tolerable, although Will Smith plays the pilot as if he is playing the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air." For instance, he tells an alien shooting a laser at him, "I know you did not shoot that green [stuff] at me."
The film drags through an excruciatingly long series of interpersonal nonsense and relational drivel between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends and ex-husbands and ex-wives.
Viewers have to sit through a boring, cutesy wedding scene, when instead all they want to see is someone standing up and kicking some alien butt.
Luckily, the movie's "message" and "plot" are merely excuses for special effects and violence. The special effects are, admittedly, marvelous, and it is pretty spectacular when the alien baddies blow things up.
But the movie would be a lot more fun if it did not put on airs, if it acknowledged that violence and special effects CAN a good movie make. The writers erred in trying to make it more.
