Ridiculously bad!

Rating: 1/10 (16 September 2005)

My one line summary pretty much sums up my feelings and thoughts on this movie. I never usually comment on films unless I've seen them more than two times so as to get the details of the film and attempt to look at the film more objectively. That is, however, not the case with AVP as having to sit through this film again might have resulted in my suicide. Grossly exaggerated of course but I really couldn't understand how the once mighty alien has become reduced to this piece garbage. Why did the studio give the OK for this film that clearly should have died in the early stages of pre-production. Paul W.S. Anderson should have had his license to make films removed so as not to create this kind of garbage ever again.
The original Alien film had some of the best acting I have ever seen in a Sci-fi film and the uniqueness was in the fact that the characters seemed really down to earth and their reactions were believable. I think they have been described as truckers in space. That is not the case with AVP. In this film its more like supermodels in space (except of course its not in space but on earth). The film copies the original Alien in the sense that quite a long time is taken to build up the characters and make them believable. They should have picked some better actors then. Sanaa Lathan has to be one of the worst leading ladies since Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls. She sucks on every front. Her performance seems forced and unbelievable. Her ability to seem scared is pretty much non-existent making the "horror" scenes seem fake. Raoul Bova was obviously cast because of his accent as the director might have thought it would bring a little spice to the film. That is, however, not the case and when you think about it the accent is all there is to the character which is otherwise flat and unbelievable. Lance Henriksen does his best and his character is without a doubt the most credible in the entire film. However, the dialog is very poor which doesn't exactly leave him with a lot to work with. The rest of the cast is pretty bad as well and I won't go into details about them as it would be the same all the way through.
The effects aren't that good. I thought they were better in Alien Resurrection (also a bad film) which was made in 1997. The fact that 7 years has passed should have meant that something would have happened in the effects department but it really hasn't in this case. At one point an alien trips up a predator using its tail and you can literally see the predator falling backwards on purpose the effects and action is that bad. The predators have quite a few stunts but the bulky suits make the predators look clumsy rather than gracious. The fact that there is little to no gore in this film ruins it almost completely. The gore was obviously removed for financial reasons. If the film had a PG-13 rating kids would be able to see the film as well and it would make more money but there is just something terribly wrong with seeing a chest-burster scene without the gore. It just isn't done.
The overall story is ridiculous so I won't go into it other than that. The story was obviously secondary. It was just a loose draft which would then justify some heavy action between the aliens and the predators but since the action is horrible there are no saving graces for the film. AVP is a horrible mainstream action movie that disgraces all the previous films with the alien in it. It almost makes me wish there was a 0 rating. Avoid it at all costs.
1/10