Surprisingly good if you're a fan of Buffy...and you realise this is a black comedy

Rating: 7/10 (29 August 2005)

Personally I put the third Alien film at the bottom of the franchise. On a recent re-watch from the Quadrilogy I realised that it's really quite a decent film but my problem is that it provides nothing to the franchise that Alien didn't already do.
Comparatively, while 'Resurrection' isn't a fantastic film in its own right, it is a different sort of film to the others by virtue of being a darkly ironic comedy. The set-up alone is preposterous (to do with cloning and memory-containing DNA) and drives the whole film to be of a different level.
Joss Whedon has disowned his script...which is a shame because it smells strongly of his style: We have characters who are sharply defined and somewhat comic book in style, and they are quick to throw out humorous one-liners. Moreover, the sort of tensions between them are the same that we saw in the original Alien film and it adds a little to the feel.
There are definitely some terrible aspects to this film: the final act is hampered by some bad SFX and the typical Hollywood thing of "Okay, everything's got to be BIGGER this time!" but even so, this film has never deserved the slating it always received and as a fourth film in a series it's certainly winning out by far against crap like Jaws: The Revenge, The Phantom Menace, Police Academy 4 and Superman IV...