The Fly meets Robocop meets Alien Nation

Rating: 6/10 (2 September 2009)

This film is basically an allegory about bigotry. While "District 9" seems to have cherry-picked its themes and plot-points from the three aforementioned films, one film it seems to resemble most (based on what I've seen from clips; I haven't seen the movie) is "The Thing with Two Heads," where a white bigot has a black man's body grafted onto him. "District 9" has some heart-rending moments, but it seems far more praised and lauded than it deserves.
The allegory is as wafer-thin as the pieces of the aliens' body we see dissected in the underground lab. It should come as no surprise why South Africa was chosen as the setting of this story, and anyone who has paid attention to the past half-century of news will know exactly what is being represented by this film. Some aspects, though, seem to require some intensive knowledge of South African history, which few people outside of the country would be aware of (the "concentration camps" into which the aliens are to be herded evokes the time and the place where the words entered the English language: Lord Kitchener's attempts to stop Boer resistance in the 1899-1902 war through herding them into appalling, unsanitary camps). In all, "Alien Nation" was much more entertaining as an allegory using the bigotry theme, if only because Terence Stamp made an awesome villain.
I suppose the filmmakers can be applauded by showing the transformation of the protagonist from annoying bureaucrat with no empathy for the "prawns" into someone who discovers his humanity while becoming an alien himself. This character is patently unlikeable at the beginning, a yes-man with an arrogant, narcissistic attitude and mush for brains. He closely resembles Tom Green, without the latter's wit, comic timing, or goofy charm; hell, the main character does not even have Jeff Goldblum's tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, even though this movie clearly borrows from "The Fly." The bureaucrat protagonist is not a funny, lovable "Brundlefly," but a simpering, self-pitying suit who only redeems himself at the end. The evil corporation that wants to vivisect the protagonist symbolizes the dangers of capitalism run amok; those who have seen "Robocop" can sniff out the resemblance to *that* film from a mile away.
The special effects were decent, but I'm jaded to the point where high-paced action, guts and gore, and computer-animated aliens and robots do not fascinate me anymore. The little alien kid was kind of cute, though.
In all, "District 9" takes cues from earlier, better movies, with a Tom Green lookalike leading the way. It's highly overrated, but far from the worst movie ever made. Neophyte sci-fi fans may like the allegory, but there are better flicks in the video store.