Buffy the Alien Slayer

Rating: 1/10 (10 March 2007)

This is an abomination. Classic stories work best in 3 acts, and the Alien Trilogy worked fine. Why was this necessary? If a 4th was to be done, it could have been good, had it explored the origins of the aliens, the boneship, and the "space jockey" species. The plot appears to have been drawn from a Dark Horse comic story, about breeding Aliens for profit. 20th Century Fox could have developed a great screenplay. Instead, Joss Whedon is brought in to create one of the lamest scripts in movie history. Definitely on par with ROBOT MONSTER. The dialogue is appalling. Cringe inducing one-liners and throwaway wisecracks abound. Worse, they are delivered by the actors in pantomime style. "Must be a chick thing", "Who do I have to f*** to get off this ship?" and so on. Terrible visual "larks" are thrown in for good measure. There doesn't seem to be anyone who isn't overacting. Except maybe Ryder, who turns in a plank-like performance. However, Ron Perlman and Dominique Pinon, take the arm-flapping and mugging to extraordinary levels. Perlman, as Joner, the "tough guy" Space Pirate, shouts, grimaces, and demonstrates that he is the badass of the story. The X-treme Badass. Pinon as the "physically challenged" character, annoys from start to finish. He whines, pouts, and plays the underdog part with the subtlety of a pipe-bomb. A pity, some fine actors were involved- Brad Dourif, Michael Wincott, Leland Orser. All wasted here. There are goofs throughout- blasting an alien head, through it's mouth, then extracting a pristine tongue/jaw. Christie has his hands by his side. Then not. Then back again, etc. This movie can be viewed, just to spot the many goofs. There are too many "hijinks", and extroverted attempts at "comedy". Jeunet and Weaver had too much "creative control" and appear to have made the film by constructing it around set piece shots and scenes: "Let's have Ripley dreaming that she is covered in cheesecloth". "Wouldnt it look brilliant to have a pit of squirming tentacles?". "What about an Alien pushing the punishment button with it's inner jaw? Not it's hands, it's dripping jaw!". "A robot in a Chapel! How very subversive, and avant garde!". The end result is forced, and seems to serve only these ostentatious "artistic" scenes. Logic is nowhere to be found in this tale. Christie cuts himself loose and thereby sacrifices himself, for his little buddy, for no apparent reason. He isn't incapacitated, the acid on his face looks little worse than a bad case of acne. Is he so vain, he would prefer death, to a future without a modeling career? Joner displays his edgy, in-your-face disposition, by blasting a spider, whose web he is inconvenienced by. Spiders on space ships? What do they catch to eat? Never mind, it is symbolic of their struggle against the aliens. Spider, bugs, aliens... get it? Tres anarchistic! The production itself blows chunks. The movie starts off well enough, but soon descends into a gaudy, psychedelic style. There appear to be lights that serve no function other than to provide a multi-coloured wash. The sets look far too big and are more "Poseidon Adventure" than "Alien". The bombastic score reminds the viewer this is a suspenseful movie, with a melodramatic- Dun, dun, dun ...DUNNNN! In over the top leathers, Weaver seems to meander through the part, falling back on a role she used from her last production. The characterization of Ripley-clone, and "The Queen" from Snow White, are awfully similar. There is actually a scene, where Weaver repeats the same "signature" hand gestures, with Ryder, that she used in "SNOW WHITE: A Tale of Terror", which was shot just prior to this. Perhaps she was channeling the Evil Queen through Ripley? Or telling us that Call is really a banished Princess? There is at least one dwarf. "What were you expecting? Santa Claus?". No, but I wasn't expecting this piece of ****, either. It makes Armageddon look cerebral. Buffy the Alien Slayer. Fox really should have hired a director who spoke English. Jeneut is not entirely to blame. Weaver and Whedon did little to help. Was going to give it 2x stars. But just thinking about this mess, makes me angry. It takes a dump on the Alien Trilogy.
Ripley: "We did it. We saved the Earth". Call: "What do we do, now?"...
Make another multi-million dollar, crappy rip off, from a now violated, cinematic legend, of course!