The Chewbacca District

Rating: 4/10 (13 September 2009)

Yesterday I felt like watching some good movie so I went on the Oslo cinematographer's website and looked through the reviews of the current films. To my great surprise I found District 9 there and it had been given 5 or 6 dice rolls (very common grading system in Norwegian media) both by newspapers and the public. Since I'm a huge sci-fi geek and I'm totally starved for GOOD sci-fi movies, I thought that this must be my lucky day. God, how wrong I was.
Before I start spewing poison here, I want to make some remarks about the good sides of this film. It is visually stunning. The special effects are awesome, even now that we are totally used to them looking 100% real. It appears very serious to begin with. Aspects of it are extremely realistic, it is very visceral and brutal. When it comes to violence and gore it made me feel like I was watching a sci-fi version of City of God. There were no previously known faces to me, not good per se but it helped increase the realism even more. There are some very sad parts, it depicts human cruelty and prejudice very well at times. I'm sure there are many more positive things to say about it.
What is the problem with it then? I'll tell you what the problem is. Where it counts, the movie makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. What is the problem with that, you may ask. The problem is that the movie starts off in a documentary style and tries to appear as realistic as possible. This totally stopped me from suspending disbelief, like I usually do when watching movies I expect to suck in the logic department. From the ratings I had seen and from the first 30 minutes or so of the movie, my expectations were sky high. To begin with I thought that this would be one of the best sci-fi movies I'd ever seen. Then, as the nonsense started to make itself more apparent, I started worrying and hoping that they would fix it somehow. But they didn't, the longer I watched the more apparent it became how stupid this movie really is. It makes as much sense as the Chewbacca Defence. It would be an insult to your intelligence if I had to explain why this is so, but I'll mention some points anyway. There is no way, and I mean NO WAY that the different parts of humanity (and the aliens) would have acted in the way they did. It's as simple as that. The logic in this movie is so completely flawed (and I don't mean the sci-fi stuff, I'm OK with that since that is meant to be accepted) that the story, including the prologue, main story, ending and each individual character's actions, seems as plausible as if the whole world were to convert to Scientology within the next two weeks. In the end I was forced to totally suspend judgment after all (something I am not able to unless I'm watching something that is MEANT to be nonsensical). I managed to take some pleasure from the 'awesome' action and special effects, in the same way that I can take pleasure from eating a McDonald's hamburger. But there is no way I can feel content when I was led to believe that I would get served some gourmet dish from the 21st century.
I am not saying that this is the dumbest movie ever made but it doesn't make more sense than most Michael Bay movies. The main problem is that it gives the opposite signals. It acts and pretends like it is a great and realistic movie but it is not. The story could easily have been so so so much better. I really don't understand what is wrong with filmmakers in this day and age. Is there some conspiracy to keep people dumbed down? I also want to criticize those of you who gave this movie a high rating. Michael Bay style movies don't deserve high ratings, and this movie definitely doesn't. I'm close to completely losing faith in the judgment of the majority, even when it comes to something supposedly as straight forward as entertainment.
If somebody could point me to a movie reviews website where logical coherence is a big factor in judging a movie's quality, I'd appreciate it immensely.