Alien to the preceding trilogy - yes!

Rating: Null/10 (15 November 2001)

Has enough already been written about this catastrophic loser of a sequel? probably....I just get so angry thinking about it, I believe it deserves one more shellacking!
Having Jeunet direct this sequel is akin to having Walt Disney direct Rocky 6 (or FIRST BLOOD 4: RAMBO GOES AFGHAN, if Stallone has his way!) It has been made with absolutely no "feel" for the series. Similar comments might justifiably have been levelled at ALIEN 3 which initially turned me off too, but age and multiple viewings have improved it. The flick has much to commend it (refer separate review if you are so inclined!) ALIEN RESURRECTION on the other hand gets worse with each viewing and ends up being turned off earlier whenever I see it! But for the cloned Ripley (A mere excuse for a sequel...better to have had her wake up back on board the NOSTROMO having dreamed 2 and 3!) the thing is a childish and puerile copy of the original even down to the need for another "Oh My God, it's a robot" scene and Jeunet could be no Ridley Scott even with multiple clonings and genetic alteration!
Ripley looks 53 and desperate for a decent scriptwriter. Winona Ryder is the wimpiest 'heroine' (I use the term lightly) you ever laid eyes on and the FX just plain laughable. The 'underwater sequence' with the digitised swimming-aliens is at once a cack-fest and an insult to the marvellous contributions of Scott and Cameron! The ONE decent scene in the movie is that where the two aliens chomp up their compatriot, so that the acid eats through their cage and frees them - I liked that! A thinking man's alien! I didn't find the "kill me" sequence either moving or relevant...sorry guys, just plain idiotic, like the rest of the disaster that is ALIEN RESURRECTION.
What would a critique of this film be without its very own paragraph reserved for the "baby alien?" My only question is.."How did Ripley keep a straight face all that time, in the proximity of that nauseatingly comical piece of aberrated latex? For that matter, how did the crew not crack-up filming it? Was it supposed to generate fear? pathos? serious contemplation of our scientific future? What it achieved in my case (after the laughter subsided) was extreme anger, that some half-baked Director, who should never have been anywhere near the set of an Alien movie, would try to foist this insultingly bad and near juvenile excuse for a monster on to my patch! Enough said!
Great ending too huh? It just stops! You could virtually see Weaver whispering to Ryder out of the corner of her mouth "Hey Win, that damned camera off us yet?"
I would happily take up a petition to have every copy of this film destroyed world-wide. It single handedly lowered the credibility of the first three films, thanks a lot Jean-Pierre, enjoy your next escargot!