Excellent flick but with flaws like any movie

Rating: 8/10 (6 August 2011)

The global movie fraternity has hailed District 9 as an astounding rare breed in the history of the sci-fi genre, one which comes once in about 50 years. I watched it, purchased it and I corroborate every positive review it generated. But like any movie, it has flaws, which the same fraternity has astonishingly declined to mention. The lack of character development is visible throughout the movie.
For starters, Vanessa Haywood, who brilliantly portrays the character of sole ostensible protagonist's wife, Tania van der Merwe, only appears in the commencement and the end of the movie. Personally, I felt it would have been more electrifying to have her character developed in the form of her defying MNU instructions and going out to look for her husband, Wikus van der Merwe, relentlessly endeavouring to discover the truth pertaining her husband's sexual intercourse scandal with aliens (allegations proapagated by her father) and even involved in some fighting hypothetically speaking.
Additionally, character development of Wikus' chief nemensis Kobus Venter, corrupt MNU CEO Dirk Michaels, Nicolas van der Merwe, MNU heads and the likes would have at least complented this classic flick. This is one error that Neill Blomkamp has to discard in future movies. In the disc's featurettes, Neill enunciates that he didn't want the action to be so over-the-top. But from what I witnessed, the action became so over-the-top that Neill declined to mommentarily deccelerate the pace of the action in order to give a more analytical detail to the storyline (the illegal genetic research programme performed on Wikus to be precise), as was the case with the Incredible Hulk, when Thunderbolt Ross explained to Emily Blonksy the serum that was developed and what culminated to scientist Bruce Banner evolving into the green hulk, and Banner and Betty Ross sharing a private conversation in Betty's House.
Maybe Blomkamp was hell-bent on completing the movie within the running time of 108 minutes. But despite the flaws, District 9 rates amongst the best science fiction movies, if not the best, ever made, largely because the great stuff that transpires in the movie outweighs any minor flaws I have detected. The movie prosperously combines sci-fi & comedy, but simultaneously evokes emotions, as its end almost left me bursting in tears. And this is all thanks to Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell for an unprecedented original story. 8.8/10 is my rating.
Seka Samuel Gaula Cape Town, South Africa