Plonk did it again

Rating: Null/10 (10 February 2001)

Alien4 - Joss "plonk" Whedon has a sixpack of lager, reads a few albums of Dark Horse comic books, vomits in a bucket, distills it, pours it at a pile of paper, goes through it, organizes the pages and sends it off to Jeunet, who has absolutely no idea what to do with it. "I theenk we shoud add ze human element" he says, and rips out the page of Whedons description of the newborn (a spidery male-ish queen alien) and adds a big mewling fatass idiot mongoloid baby elephant with a skull for a face. Add *crap* CG effects that show off the alien far too much for it to be scary, roaring aliens and acid spittle, plastic underwater aliens, a whining horrid Winona Ryder, a Ripley that should have stayed dead, idiot attempts at gigerisms (semi-erotic ripley vs alien imagery), "intelligent aliens" (WHY!? WHYYY!? This is aliens, not jurassic they-can-open-doors f***in park) and you have a perfect recipe for a franchise tombstone. I sat through Alien 4 laughing at the pathetic wannabe blagh whatever nonsense and wondering wether the reason the lights in the cinema turned off was because there were dwarves sitting inside the lamps. Terrible.. terrible terrible. I disown this film as an Alien film. Its not. Its a stupid film.
Alright, so lets review it as a separate movie on its own.
Pretty photography. Jeunet has a way with pictures. Thing is, it all seems like a visual reprisal of City of lost children, which is also echoed in the score, coming off as a strange nursery-rhyme-horror-ha-ha. Even 2 of the same actors (Johner and DeVriess). The set designs and costumes look like something out of the dark horse aliens comic books, which may not be a bad thing. After seeing Alien Resurrection one of the few things that came to my mind other than "oh.. my.. god that was dumb" was "hrm, if they're going to mess up the aliens franchise, why not make a TV show. Hey, it worked allright for Stargate". The plot in A-R is so flat anyway, it could have been told in 45 minutes no problems whatsoever. The characters are cartoony as well. A lot of them are obviously chosen to accomodate the public. mad professor, funny paraphlegic (bwahahah), "cool" mercs, asshole militaries.. this is all straight out of the comic books. The Ripley in A-R is cartoony too, and i dont particularly care for her. She reminds me of a girl i ran into last new years eve, frightening woman that, quirky and annoying. Crud.
One thing i find particularly funny about this movie is that i actually prefer Deep Blue Sea and Deep Rising. Its essentially the same plot anyway and the gags are funnier.
Thats all i can say really. Its a truly mediocre film. It kind of reminds me of what happened to Starwars episode 1, how they dumbed the franchise down and niced it up for a younger public.
As an alien film : 1 out of 10 As a standalone scifi flick : 5 out of 10