adventures into surrealism

Rating: 5/10 (28 January 2002)

If one thing can be said about Jeunet's direction of this film, it is that he has an uncanny visual sense of the alien (no pun intended) and surreal. From Ripley's weird little body movements into which she occasionally lapses to the makeup and costume design of the human/alien hybrid at the end of the film, this is one visually trippy experience.
The cast is pretty good -- with stand-outs being Sigourney Weaver (the ultimate femme bad-ass), Brad Dourif (the weird and crazy alien-obsessed doctor), and Michael Wincott (the surly yet likeable captain of the spaceship Betty). Unfortunately, though, Joss Whedon (whose Buffy TV series is about the only reason I miss having a boob-tube) really screws up the script. He never allows the characters to breath, constantly forcing them to spit out stupid one-liners in practically every scene.

Additionally, the plot is nothing we haven't seen before in this series and offers little to keep us guessing. Overall, it's a decent effort, though one must wonder how much better it could have been in the hands of a more capable script-writer.
FINAL RATING: 5/10