Worse than you deserve, but still better than you'd expect.

Rating: 7/10 (22 December 2007)

I'll make this quick, giving this film about as much of my time as it deserves. That sounds demeaning, but I don't mean it to be. Bottom line, if you're thinking of seeing a movie called 'Aliens vs. Predator,' you not only know pretty much what to expect, but you also clearly have nothing better to do. The title of this movie says a lot.
With that in mind, this film is a faintly pleasant surprise. It's no masterpiece by any vestige of a stretch of the imagination, but it's about as good as a film called 'Aliens vs. Predator' could be. People complain about the crummy plot and the butchering of the mythos of two highly revered sci-fi franchises, but aren't these foibles implicit to the title? What did you expect walking in?
Frankly, I'm glad there was a new storyline, shabby or not; it kept me much more interested than if they had tried to somehow combine the stories without warping them -and how exactly they might have managed that is a profound mystery to me.
To reiterate, you know pretty much all you need to know from the title. You're going to get some flippant action scenes involving characters who are largely disposable, punctuated by the occasional reference to the respective franchises and the traits of their respective monsters. Thing is, the action is a lot more well done, and the characters a lot less disposable, than a movie of this nature deserves. On top of that, many of the special effects are fairly top notch, paying the alien and the predator as much respect as possible, considering the bastardization inherent to letting them versus each other.
You already know, before reading this review, whether or not you plan to see it. I'm just saying that if you do, you'd be unreasonable to find yourself disappointed.