Three´s enough...

Rating: 5/10 (4 July 2001)

You gotta give the studio and producers credit for their choice of director. A French art cinema visualist who doesn´t speak any English, instead of a no-nonsense action craftsman (like James Cameron). Perhaps they wanted the series to go in another direction, following the much debated, but criminally underrated #3. The end result is, while not an entire washout, also the most disappointing and uneven of the series. The cast is interesting enough, Jeunet reunites Pinon and Perlman from his previous film "La citté des enfants perdus". Weaver rises way above the material, and Ryder is OK. Michael Wincott is strangely subdued and Dan Hedaya´s hairy back is scarier than any alien you´ll ever see! There are a couple of genuinely startling and beautiful scenes that proves Jeunet to be an excellent visual talent. The shootout with Perlman dangling from a ladder is astonishing, and the crew being chased by two aliens underwater is intense and scary, especially with John Frizzell´s forceful score. Watch as a woman desperately tries to escape one of them... The film´s most memorable and poignant scene, however, is where the cloned Weaver meets her previously failed clones. A genuinely touching and sad scene, which is rather abruptly punctured by Perlman´s chauvinist joke.
But they blew it with that ending...the alien is about as scary as any of the Teletubbies. **½ (of ****)